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. Her _Ode to Washington_ has 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 how _The Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels_ became
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.
XIII
ADVENTURES OF AN INCOMPETENT
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.