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 about _him_.
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 of _The 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.
XIV
HE FINDS A FRIEND
Arthur's first act on regaining his hotel was to terminate his
residence therein. He ought to have done this long ago, for these
thronged corridors, resounding night and day with the chink of
innumerable dollars, was no place for one so poor as he. He had stayed
there rather from natural heedlessness and inexperience than from
choice; partly also in the hope that the invaluable Bundy would arrive;
but now his fears were thoroughly aroused. Legion's phrase about the
benches in Union Park and the breadline stuck in his mind. He had
heard of such tragedies; he remembered a story which Vickars had told
him of one of the most brilliant poets of the day who, in the course of
his early struggles, had been reduced to holding horses at public-house
doors for ha'pence in the Strand. It had also been the habit of his
father, when he wished to inculcate habits of economy and perseverance
on his childish mind, to do so by various realistic versions of the
prodigal son, illustrated from the histories of certain men he had
known who had not possessed the sense "to know which side their bread
was buttered." It seemed that he was well upon the way to become such
a prodigal. He was bound for the bread-line. Well, if this were the
appointed night when he was to take farewell of respectability, the
obsequies should be fitly celebrated. If to-morrow he must starve,
to-night, at least, he would eat; he had lost so much that no further
loss could make him poor; and from the extreme of fear his mind ran to
the extreme of recklessness. From the clerk with the tooth-pick he
learned the address of a small hotel near the docks, to which he
ordered his trunks to be forwarded; having done which, and distributed
various tips with a gentlemanly profusion, he stepped out into the
gathering night of New York.
The city hummed and sang like some monstrous wheel, driven by an unseen
dynamo. It presented to the eye a riot of life and light; its lofty
buildings flared like torches, its shops glowed like jewels, its
streets were lanes of fire; and into the upper air, still coloured with
the hues of sunset, there rose an immense reverberation, composed of
human cries and shouts, wheels pounding on granite roads, wheels
groaning on roads of steel, all resolved into a thunderous bass note,
the raucous music of the human multitude. There are moods in which
such a spectacle is exhilarating, moods in which it is dreadful; but
there is another and a rarer mood, when it appears majestic. As Arthur
surveyed the scene, it was this aspect of majesty that appealed to him.
It overwhelmed his mind with an impression more commonly attributed to
astronomy--viz., the entire insignificance of the individual in
relation to physical magnitudes. His own particular troubles suddenly
assumed dwarfed proportions; his little life appeared a mere bubble
floating for an instant on the crest of disappearing waves; the city
itself a streaming star-river, flowing out of dark eternities, peopled
for an instant by a tribe of eager ants. To what avail the strife, the
passion, the disorder of these tiny lives? Yet a little while, a few
days it might be, a few years at most, and he would be lost to sight as
though he had never been. But the wheel would spin on, with a million
new Ixions bound upon its flaming spokes; the magnificent and monstrous
city would go on, piling pyramid on pyramid above the bones of its
exhausted slaves, and with not one light the less because he did not
see it, not one softened moment in its raucous song because his ear was
filled with the clods of the valley.