A hundred and fifty thousand volumes! And an average of three readers to
each! Half a million of people would be reading him within a week, and
every one of them would write to him, and their friends and relations
would write too. He laid down the paper with a shudder.
The two notes looked harmless enough, and the calligraphy of one was
vaguely familiar. He opened the envelope and looked at the signature:
_Duncan Vyse_. He had not seen the name in years--what on earth could
Duncan Vyse have to say? He ran over the page and dropped it with a
wondering exclamation, which the watchful Strett, re-entering, met by a
tentative “Yes, sir?”
“Nothing. Yes--that is--” Betton picked up the note. “There’s a
gentleman, a Mr. Vyse, coming to see me at ten.”
Strett glanced at the clock. “Yes, sir. You’ll remember that ten was the
hour you appointed for the secretaries to call, sir.”
Betton nodded. “I’ll see Mr. Vyse first. My clothes, please.”
As he got into them, in the state of irritable hurry that had become
almost chronic with him, he continued to think about Duncan Vyse. They
had seen a lot of each other for the few years after both had left
Harvard: the hard happy years when Betton had been grinding at his
business and Vyse--poor devil!--trying to write. The novelist recalled
his friend’s attempts with a smile; then the memory of one small volume
came back to him. It was a novel: “The Lifted Lamp.” There was stuff in
that, certainly. He remembered Vyse’s tossing it down on his table with
a gesture of despair when it came back from the last publisher. Betton,
taking it up indifferently, had sat riveted till daylight. When he
ended, the impression was so strong that he said to himself: “I’ll
tell Apthorn about it--I’ll go and see him to-morrow.” His own secret
literary yearnings gave him a passionate desire to champion Vyse, to see
him triumph over the ignorance and timidity of the publishers. Apthorn
was the youngest of the guild, still capable of opinions and the courage
of them, a personal friend of Betton’s, and, as it happened, the man
afterward to become known as the privileged publisher of “Diadems and
Faggots.” Unluckily the next day something unexpected turned up, and
Betton forgot about Vyse and his manuscript. He continued to forget for
a month, and then came a note from Vyse, who was ill, and wrote to
ask what his friend had done. Betton did not like to say “I’ve done
nothing,” so he left the note unanswered, and vowed again: “I’ll see
Apthorn.”
The following day he was called to the West on business, and was gone
a month. When he came back, there was another note from Vyse, who was
still ill, and desperately hard up. “I’ll take anything for the book,
if they’ll advance me two hundred dollars.” Betton, full of compunction,
would gladly have advanced the sum himself; but he was hard up too,
and could only swear inwardly: “I’ll write to Apthorn.” Then he glanced
again at the manuscript, and reflected: “No--there are things in it that
need explaining. I’d better see him.”
Once he went so far as to telephone Apthorn, but the publisher was out.
Then he finally and completely forgot.
One Sunday he went out of town, and on his return, rummaging among
the papers on his desk, he missed “The Lifted Lamp,” which had been
gathering dust there for half a year. What the deuce could have become
of it? Betton spent a feverish hour in vainly increasing the disorder of
his documents, and then bethought himself of calling the maid-servant,
who first indignantly denied having touched anything (“I can see that’s
true from the dust,” Betton scathingly interjected), and then mentioned
with hauteur that a young lady had called in his absence and asked to be
allowed to get a book.
“A lady? Did you let her come up?”
“She said somebody’d sent her.”
Vyse, of course--Vyse had sent her for his manuscript! He was always
mixed up with some woman, and it was just like him to send the girl of
the moment to Betton’s lodgings, with instructions to force the door
in his absence. Vyse had never been remarkable for delicacy. Betton,
furious, glanced over his table to see if any of his own effects were
missing--one couldn’t tell, with the company Vyse kept!--and then
dismissed the matter from his mind, with a vague sense of magnanimity in
doing so. He felt himself exonerated by Vyse’s conduct.
The sense of magnanimity was still uppermost when the valet opened the
door to announce “Mr. Vyse,” and Betton, a moment later, crossed the
threshold of his pleasant library.
His first thought was that the man facing him from the hearth-rug was
the very Duncan Vyse of old: small, starved, bleached-looking, with the
same sidelong movements, the same queer air of anaemic truculence. Only
he had grown shabbier, and bald.
Betton held out a hospitable hand.
“This is a good surprise! Glad you looked me up, my dear fellow.”
Vyse’s palm was damp and bony: he had always had a disagreeable hand.
“You got my note? You know what I’ve come for?” he said.
“About the secretaryship? (Sit down.) Is that really serious?”
Betton lowered himself luxuriously into one of his vast Maple
arm-chairs. He had grown stouter in the last year, and the cushion
behind him fitted comfortably into the crease of his nape. As he leaned
back he caught sight of his image in the mirror between the windows, and
reflected uneasily that Vyse would not find _him_ unchanged.
“Serious?” Vyse rejoined. “Why not? Aren’t _you?_”
“Oh, perfectly.” Betton laughed apologetically. “Only--well, the fact
is, you may not understand what rubbish a secretary of mine would have
to deal with. In advertising for one I never imagined--I didn’t aspire
to any one above the ordinary hack.”
“I’m the ordinary hack,” said Vyse drily.
Betton’s affable gesture protested. “My dear fellow--. You see it’s not
business--what I’m in now,” he continued with a laugh.
Vyse’s thin lips seemed to form a noiseless “_ Isn’t_ it?” which they
instantly transposed into the audibly reply: “I inferred from your
advertisement that you want some one to relieve you in your literary
work. Dictation, short-hand--that kind of thing?”
“Well, no: not that either. I type my own things. What I’m looking for
is somebody who won’t be above tackling my correspondence.”
Vyse looked slightly surprised. “I should be glad of the job,” he then
said.
Betton began to feel a vague embarrassment. He had supposed that such a
proposal would be instantly rejected. “It would be only for an hour
or two a day--if you’re doing any writing of your own?” he threw out
interrogatively.
“No. I’ve given all that up. I’m in an office now--business. But it
doesn’t take all my time, or pay enough to keep me alive.”
“In that case, my dear fellow--if you could come every morning; but
it’s mostly awful bosh, you know,” Betton again broke off, with growing
awkwardness.
Vyse glanced at him humorously. “What you want me to write?”
“Well, that depends--” Betton sketched the obligatory smile. “But I was
thinking of the letters you’ll have to answer. Letters about my books,
you know--I’ve another one appearing next week. And I want to be
beforehand now--dam the flood before it swamps me. Have you any idea of
the deluge of stuff that people write to a successful novelist?”
As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse’s thin cheek, and his own
reflected it in a richer glow of shame. “I mean--I mean--” he stammered
helplessly.
“No, I haven’t,” said Vyse; “but it will be awfully jolly finding out.”
There was a pause, groping and desperate on Betton’s part, sardonically
calm on his visitor’s.
“You--you’ve given up writing altogether?” Betton continued.
“Yes; we’ve changed places, as it were.” Vyse paused. “But about these
letters--you dictate the answers?”
“Lord, no! That’s the reason why I said I wanted somebody--er--well used
to writing. I don’t want to have anything to do with them--not a thing!
You’ll have to answer them as if they were written to _you_--” Betton
pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the
drawers of his writing-table.
“Here--this kind of rubbish,” he said, tossing a packet of letters onto
Vyse’s knee.
“Oh--you keep them, do you?” said Vyse simply.
“I--well--some of them; a few of the funniest only.”
Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was
glancing over them Betton again caught his own reflection in the
glass, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor.
It occurred to him for the first time that his high-coloured well-fed
person presented the image of commercial rather than of intellectual
achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of “Diadems
and Faggots”--and he wondered why.
Vyse laid the letters aside. “I think I can do it--if you’ll give me a
notion of the tone I’m to take.”
“The tone?”
“Yes--that is, if I’m to sign your name.”
“Oh, of course: I expect you to sign for me. As for the tone, say just
what you’d--well, say all you can without encouraging them to answer.”
Vyse rose from his seat. “I could submit a few specimens,” he suggested.
“Oh, as to that--you always wrote better than I do,” said Betton
handsomely.
“I’ve never had this kind of thing to write. When do you wish me to
begin?” Vyse enquired, ignoring the tribute.
“The book’s out on Monday. The deluge will begin about three days after.
Will you turn up on Thursday at this hour?” Betton held his hand out
with real heartiness. “It was great luck for me, your striking that
advertisement. Don’t be too harsh with my correspondents--I owe them
something for having brought us together.”