When he came back, after a year or so, there was a vast change in him.
He was more sure of himself; and in the Martin one night he told me how
various other periodicals were now after him. His rate would have to go
up, and all that sort of thing. He liked me, and _The Athenian_, but one
must grow, and there were wider fields for him to penetrate; and it was
all right that we had made him what he was, but in the final summing up
a man must think of himself, and one's career was one's career, you
know. He brought in several fashionable names, I remember--I don't
recall just how he did it, but he tried to appear casual when he spoke
of Mrs. Thus-and-So, who had a mansion on Fifth Avenue; and he indicated
that he often dined there now. They had met in the Orient, and Reggie
was a corker, too, and he might summer at Newport, and what did I think
of an offer of five thousand dollars from a great weekly for a serial
dealing with high life?
He sickened me that evening. Yes, he was a prig, a snob, and I don't
know what else. Frankly and coldly I told him to go to the dickens. Our
magazine had existed without him once upon a time, and it could go on
existing without him. I was sorry to see him make such a fool of
himself.
His whole attitude changed.
"Oh, don't think I mean all I say, Allison!" he pleaded. "I'll continue
to give you something now and again. After all, I've got a wide audience
with you people, and I don't quite wish to lose it."
That irritated me more than ever--his stupid patronage, his abominable
self-assurance. I remember paying the check very grandiloquently, and
leaving him alone--as he was so fond of being, at one time--in the
center of the room.
When we met thereafter of course we were exceedingly chilly to each
other. Once I saw him with Mrs. Thus-and-So, and he cut me dead. I
suppose I looked painfully inadequate, utterly unimportant to him that
afternoon. He had moved to higher circles; and after all I was only a
struggling young editor, who dressed rather badly--; all right for
certain occasions, but hardly one to be seen bowing to at a moment like
this! I read his mind, you see; and again he knew that I knew; and of
course he hated me from that time forth.
It was at this time that the phrase, "See America First," came into such
wide circulation. It was considered the thing to look over the Grand
Canyon or the Yellowstone Park, or to run down to Florida, rather than
cross the ocean; and I next heard of Shelby in the West, diligently
writing--for other magazines. He had brought out one more novel, "The
Orange Sunset," and it had gone far better than the first, which must
have heartened him and given him a fresh impetus. He changed book
publishers, too--went to a smarter firm who did much for him in the way
of publicity. And special editions, in limp covers, helped his sales.
Even his short stories were brought out, and as little brochures, in
gorgeous binding with colored illustrations, a single tale would attract
the romantic maiden. It was a chocolate-cream appeal; but cream-drops
have their uses in this weary world.
The San Francisco earthquake--I believe they always allude to it out
there as "the fire"--occurred--that next year; and Stanton, who had
succeeded old Hanscher in Herald Square--the latter had died in harness
at his desk--heard, in that mysterious way that newspaper men hear
everything, that Shelby was in the ill-fated city when the earth rocked
on that disastrous night. Immediately he telegraphed him, "Write two
thousand words of your experiences, your sensations in calamity. Wire
them immediately. Big check awaits you."
Silence followed. Stanton and I talked it over, and we concluded that
Shelby must have been killed.
"If he isn't dead, here at last is the great adventure he has been
longing for," I couldn't help saying.
No word ever came from him; but two weeks later he blew into town, and
again Stanton found out that he had arrived.
"Why didn't you answer my wire?" he telephoned him.
"I couldn't," Shelby rather whimpered over the line. "You see, Stanton,
old top, the thing got me too deeply. I just couldn't--I hope you'll
understand--write one word of it."
But it was not the grief of the man who feels so deeply that he cannot
shed a tear. It was the craven in Shelby that had shocked the
meretricious Shelby into insensibility, into utter inarticulateness in
one of the crowning disasters of the ages.
In the face of something so real, so terribly real, he was but a puny
worm, with no vocabulary to express his emotions--for he had none, save
the emotion of fear. That we knew from people who had been at the same
hotel where he was stopping when the great shock came. He ran through
the corridors like a frightened doe, in pajamas of silk, with wonderful
tassels of green. He wrung his hands, and babbled like a lunatic. "Oh,
my manuscripts! My manuscripts!" were the only intelligible words that
came from his white lips.
Think of it! He thought of those piffling stories--those stories of
unreality, when he was experiencing the biggest thing that ever came
into his little life! Do you wonder that we cared even less for him
after that? That I refused to see him at all, and that even wise,
understanding Bill Stanton couldn't touch his syndicate stuff?