|ONLY by long service does one become an artist, but one becomes married
by a simple ceremony. It is the tragedy of marriage, which is the
most difficult of all the arts, that most people come to it without
apprenticeship. Perhaps the popularity of widows as brides is due to the
fact that the widow is a widow: that she has been broken in to marriage:
that she has not everything to learn: that one, at any rate, of the
contracting parties, is expert. There is much to be said for the policy
of the “trial trip.”
Courtship, if intimate enough, may be a fairish substitute, bowdlerized,
as it were, for a “trial trip,” but when Sam married Ada he knew
pitiably little about her.
He thought that she was wonderful. Not only had he to think it, but he
actually did think it. He had to think it because only for a prodigy
among women could he have treated his mother as he did. He had thought
her crazy when she put her hand into the lire, but he knew it was
heroic. If she were crazy, it was for love for him, and at the core, he
loved her too and felt ashamed of himself, but Ada stood between them,
and he was not going to give up Ada. Then he was busy, time wore on,
custom blunted the prick of conscience, and it finally became a habit
either not to think of Anne at all, or to think comfortably of her as
happy enough with Madge.
And he actually thought Ada wonderful because the conditions of
his courtship fought for her. He was visibly prospering; he liked
prosperity; it was Ada who had initiated his prosperity; and she was
glamorous for that. Again, he was very busy in those days with the first
steps of his new business, too occupied to play the diligent lover, and
saw her very fitfully. So seen, she did not lose the wonder of surprise,
but came upon him freshly with each of their meetings, able to parade
for each some new attraction from her slender stock of charm. She kept
their intercourse egregiously correct, and he thought her mystery was
infinite. She hid her shallowness behind affected modesty, knowing that
an intimate courtship would discover to him that there was nothing to
discover, and attracted by aloofness. It was immensely clever in its
short-winded way: a cleverness that lasted the course of courtship,
but evaporated when the tape--the altar--was reached. It did not seem
necessary to Ada to go on being clever once that ring was on her finger.
She was married, she had achieved: she was clever for the spurt, and
had no cleverness left, for the Marathon Race. And Sam had many
preoccupations in those days which prevented him from thinking too much
about Ada.
If he was dull about his courtship, his wits were sharp enough for other
matters. He had the satisfaction, almost from the day of its issue, of
seeing the pamphlet sell steadily. Very quickly it ceased to be a case
of getting his money back, and became merely a question of how many
cents per cent he was going to make. His first edition of five thousand
(the _soi-disant_ thousand) was rapidly exhausted, and the presses of
Carter Meadowbank worked overtime to cope with the demand. He cast bread
upon the waters by sending copies to every name in the Clergy List and
every Member of Parliament; and did not cast in vain. Free advertisement
was lavished upon him. Somehow, he had found one of those times when
the social conscience is stirred: he published, without knowing it,
opportunely, and the diabolic cleverness of Gerald Adams’ writing
steered him safely past the rocks of the Public Prosecutor. It seemed
only to stimulate demand when he raised the price to a shilling.
He had no further trouble with the pamphlet. It sold itself, but sitting
still watching the wheels go round did not appeal to Sam, who had a
thousand pounds to multiply. He hadn’t quite the hardihood to
believe that he could multiply his thou sand as rapidly as he had the
twenty-five which he paid Adams, but he felt that he was launched as a
publisher and had nothing to publish.
His thoughts were diverted from that solecism one day when he went into
Carter’s printing-office to speed up the foreman. The foreman admitted
that the pace could be improved. “But I dunno, sir, that the boss wants
it improved. There’s nothing in to follow this job of yours. You might
say you’ve been the saving of Mr. Carter.”
Sam was thoughtful for a minute. He had not looked upon himself as the
saviour of Mr. Carter and did not appreciate that character when it was
thrust upon him. He went into Carter’s office.
“This little tract of mine,” he said (“tract” seemed the light
description in that text-hung room), “is selling remarkably well, and
the demand increases. Now, I’ve nothing to say about the past.-I came in
here a total stranger and you quoted me accordingly. But it’s only fair
to warn you that I have gone into prices with other printers and I may
find it necessary to make a change.”
Carter made no effort to hide his dismay. “I hope you won’t do that, Mr.
Branstone. At least, give me a chance of revising my price.”
“Once bitten,” said Sam, “is twice shy, and you don’t deny that you
bit.”
“But surely business,” argued Carter, “is business.”
“It is,” said Sam grimly, “and if you’ll answer me a few questions on
the understanding that this is a business interview and I’m not being
impertinently inquisitive, I shall be obliged.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Carter.
“Thank you. How old are your printing-presses?”
“Twenty years.”
“Consequently they are almost hopelessly out of date?”
Carter had a tenderness for those presses. They had been young when he
was young, were bought when the world smiled on him and his business
had its hedyay. They had kept him and he could not be disloyal now. “I
believe that they have printed your tract efficiently, Mr. Branstone,”
he defended them.
“Oh, there’s life in the old dogs yet,” said Sam. “I’m not proposing to
make scrap-iron of them.”
“As they belong to me,” said Carter tartly, “it would not make such
difference if you did propose it.”
“Therefore,” said Sam, “I don’t propose it--yet. Please remember that
I’m talking business. Do you care to tell me what that text cost to
produce and what you get for it?”
Carter did not care, but, though he wondered at himself, he told. “And
that?” Sam asked, pointing to another; and again Carter told.
“Then,” said Sam, “there are two religious papers which you print for
the proprietors. What----?”
“Young man,” interrupted Carter, “are you proposing to buy my business?”
“No,” said Sam coolly, “only to become your partner in it. What profit
were you going to tell me you made on the papers?”
Carter told: he was too stupefied to do anything else. “Um,” said Sam.
“It isn’t much.”
“They are a good work,” said Carter, and Sam looked at him sharply, but
the old man was perfectly sincere. It was good work to print religious
magazines and he did it for next to nothing.
“Well,” said Sam, “thank you. Now I won’t mince matters: When I came
along with my--tract, I enabled you to postpone filing your petition,
but it was only a postponement, and if you’ll look facts in the face the
one big fact for you is bankruptcy.”
“The Lord will provide.” Carter had lived from hand to mouth for many
months in that belief.
“If you like to look at it that way. He has provided: He has provided
me. I will make you a good offer, Mr. Carter. I will introduce five
him dred pounds capital into the business for a halfshare in the plant,
goodwill and future profits of this concern. That is, the printing
business. What I, as publisher, do has nothing to do with you.”
“... I must think it over,” said Carter; but they both knew that he had
already decided to accept.
“The Lord,” Carter was thinking, “_has_ provided.” Sam, on the
contrary, was thinking, “I may or may not be a fool to go into this
without getting an accountant’s report on the books, but I believe in
rapid action, and if I’d offered too high a price I’m certain that he’s
imbecile enough to have told me.”
It remained to find something to print, and he wanted Stewart’s advice,
but, with the idea of being first on the side of the angels, went to see
Peter Struggles. The battle which had raged round the pamphlet had left
Peter untouched, even though more than one of the clergy who received
it from Sam had thought it their duty to write to Peter’s bishop. The
bishop failed to see a case for disciplinary measures: Peter might have
been sinned against but he had not sinned. And the _Sunday Judge_ was
read by neither Peter nor his bishop. (The Church is notoriously out
of touch with modern life, but, after all, it is hardly reasonable
to expect the Church to compliment its rival, the _Sunday Press_, by
reading it.)
Nevertheless, Peter had, on reflection, felt some wavering doubts about
the pamphlet. His intermittent shrewdness threw a flickering light
through the haze of his charity and gave him moments of discomfort.
Sam’s attitude during this call was admirably calculated to resolve
his doubt. He wanted, with an eye to the future, to make sure of Peter,
whose name he might require another day, and was ready, even if it were
not immediately profitable, to placate Peter now. He explained that he
had joined forces with Mr. Carter, and at once acquired merit in Peter’s
eyes. Carter was irreproachable. He did not explain by what means he had
been able to join Carter and it did not occur to Peter to ask. Sam was
not going to tell Peter, who would tell Ada, of his legacy. If she found
out, as Anne had found out, he could not help it, but, meantime, it
was his secret. Ada, like Anne, belonged to the sex which had no
understanding of business.
“And the point,” said Sam, “with a business like Mr. Carter’s, is to use
it for good. I take it that the texts do good, but perhaps they are
only for the simple-minded. I hope I don’t despise people for their
simplicity, but my own taste runs rather to books and I think you will
agree with me.”
Peter agreed, with a quotation which rather dashed Sam; he had an idea
that poetry did not sell.
“‘Poets are the trumpets which sing to battle. Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world.’”
“Yes,” said Sam. “Quite so. But isn’t poetry going to the opposite
extreme? I had the thought of something more direct. Good prose with a
good moral.”
“Excellent,” said Peter, off again.
“‘Were not God’s laws,
His gospel laws, In olden time held forth
By types, shadows and metaphors?’”
“Of course they were,” said Sam, wondering when Peter would close his
mental dictionary of quotations and come down to business, “and that
quotation is very apt because I was thinking of classics. English
classics, you know,” he explained hurriedly, “and classics because they
are not copyright.”
“And have stood the test of time,” said Peter.
“Yes. Do you think you could propose a list? I should like to know that
the first books I publish had been selected by you. I don’t think they
ought to be exactly theological, but they must be good in every sense of
the word.”
“Why not begin with the book from whose in traduction I just quoted?”
“Why not indeed?” said Sam, who hadn’t the faintest idea of the source
of the quotation.
“Very well,” said Peter. “Suppose you put that down for one.”
Same made vague scratches on paper. He had a bookish reputation to
sustain and he was not going to betray ignorance prematurely. “Then,”
said Feter, “there is Law’s ‘Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.’”
“I’m letting myself in for something,” thought Sam, but he wrote it
down.
“‘The Imitation of Christ,’ and ‘The Little Flowers of St. Francis,’”
Peter went on.
“I think those should be enough to begin with,” said Sam hurriedly.
“Four, isn’t it?” said Peter, recapitulating.
“The ‘Pilgrim’s Progress ‘“----(“Thank God,” thought Sam, “I needn’t
give myself away.”)
“Yes, four,” he interrupted, reading the now completed list. “And I am
very much obliged to you.”
He wasn’t, though, quite sure about it. He had “nobbled” Peter, but he
feared those books would be a millstone round his neck. There might be a
steady sale for the “Pilgrim’s Progress” as a prize, but the
others----! Still, he need not print many copies of them, and--consoling
thought--they would be good window-dressing tor his list. He hoped it
would include other, very different, books.
“I’m sorry Ada is out,” Peter was saying, and Sam was rather startled to
realize that he had not missed her. But he was sure of his position
with her: it was his position for her which he had to consolidate. He
proceeded to consolidate it by going in search of Stewart, and found him
where he expected to find him, in a bar.
“I want your advice,” said Sam.
“Whisky for the gentleman, Flora,” said Stewart. “That’s my advice and
you’ll get no other till you’ve taken this.”
Sam took it. Business is business and, beyond that, his thrifty
prejudices were less necessary now.
“You’re not unteachable,” said Stewart. “It’s a point in your favour.
The proper thing when you’ve drunk that is to ask me if I will have
another. My reply will be in the affirmative and we shall then retire,
with sustaining refreshment, into that corner, where I will advise you
for as long as you can continue to buy whisky for me and drink level. I
hate a shirker.”
Sam told him of his partnership with Carter. “I’m always troubled about
you,” said Stewart. “I can never make up my mind whether you’re too
clever to live or whether you were born with luck instead of brain.
Obviously, you will publish novels.”
“There are so many kinds,” said Sam.
“No. Only two. Mine and the rest. But I suffer from honesty. Therefore I
tell you that my novel has been refused by every publisher in London. It
is waiting,” he said hopefully, “for a man with courage. The difference
between it and the Yellow Book is that my book _is_ yellow.”
“I see,” said Sam. “But I have gone into the publishing trade to make my
living.”
“On the whole,” decided Stewart, “you are more knave than fool. And you
would call it the publishing trade. It’s a benighted world, but there
are still some publishers who aren’t in trade--beyond the midriff. Do
you seriously come to me to ask what sort of novels to publish?”
“Yes.”
“The sort,” he said, “that is written for nursemaids by people who ought
to be nursemaids.”
“That’s jealousy,” said Sam. “They get published and you don’t.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Stewart. “But I’ve always heard that seeing
is believing. Do you ever go to the theatre?”
“Not often.”
“It’s a pity, because if you did, I’ve a tragedy in blank verse that
you might care to publish. It is great art and will never be produced.
Still, I’m a philanthropist to-night and you will come to the theatre
with me. I happen to be going for the _Warden._”
“Are you a dramatic critic for the _Warden?_” asked Sam, rather awed.
“I’m a reporter, old son. This isn’t the kind of play they waste a
critic on. Drink up, and we’ll go.”
Sam found, to his relief, that he was able to go and decided he had a
strong head. The theatre was crowded when they reached it and Stewart
was young enough to sit self-consciously in one of the two seats kept
for the _Manchester Warden_. Dramatic criticism was taken seriously on
that journal; at least two of the paper’s regular critics were men of
genius, and Stewart hoped that he might be mistaken for one of them. But
the audience that night was not the kind which interests itself in the
lions of the higher journalism; rather it justified the contemptuous
reference to drama as the “art of the mob.” It would have made a sincere
democrat weep for his convictions. “Behold them,” said Stewart. “The
Public.”
Sam beheld them more than he beheld the play. He reminded himself that
he was there on business, to be shown something which Stewart wanted him
to see, and if he had not the gift of detachment, he assumed it.
When Adams had read his paper to the Concentrics, Sam had listened but
kept his eyes on the audience. In a darkened theatre, the audience was
more difficult to watch, but he could feel its quick response to
the play, could hear its ready laughter and its quite eager ears.
Emphatically, here was a play which seized its audience, gripped them,
tickled them, beslavered them, throttled them, did with them what it
liked and when it liked; all to their immense and vociferous delight. He
tried to keep his aloofness, to see how it was done, to tear the heart
out of this mystery. Here was something which the public wanted; he had
only to diagnose it, and the Open Sesame to fortune was his.
He couldn’t do it. Detachment slipped from him, never to return till the
curtain fell. He wasn’t a superman, immune from other men’s emotions.
The play took hold of him and swayed him with the rest. He tried
resistance, vainly; told himself that he was here, not, as these others
were, for pleasure, but to learn, to learn; and the play gripped him the
harder for his attempt to take it coldly.
At the end, Sam was applauding wildly while Stewart watched him with
cynical amusement. “Caught you all right,” he said, “and by way of a
confession I’ll own that the damned thing nearly got me once. Rum place,
the theatre, isn’t it? But,” he grew more serious, “I’ve to write about
that, write without being libellous about that maudlin, sentimental,
erotic, religious trash. It’s enough to make a man give up journalism
and take to something honest, like coal-heaving. But I’m forgetting. I
brought you here to teach you something. Have you learnt it? That’s a
play, but the same thing applies to a novel. You find novels with ‘The
Sign of the Cross’ in them, my boy. Queasy sentimentality to sicken a
bee, and, for the rest, don’t forget that Jesus died for you to make
money out of novels. This play makes me blasphemous, but I’m doing the
devil’s advocate to you to-night, so it’s all in the picture. When
I’ve finished my notice I think I’ll try a ‘short’ on ‘The Tradesman
Publisher’ or ‘The Dignity of Letters.’ It will be good for my
conscience.”
“I wish you would,” said Sam. “I’ll reply to it, with a list of the
classics I am going to publish.”
“Sometimes,” said Stewart, “you rather sicken me. I am speaking of the
_Manchester Warden_, not the _Sunday Judge_. Good-night.”
But the vacillations of a journalist with a foot in two camps and an
idealistic standard which he hardly pretended to take seriously himself
left Sam unimpressed. The play and Stewart’s description of its essence
had given him furiously to think. He imagined that he knew the sort of
novel he wanted and he was not troubled by Stewart’s disease of dual
standards. Sam had one standard, the success standard; and anything else
was muddle-headedness. At the same time he felt most grateful to Stewart
who had advertised the pamphlet and now presented him with a policy.
It was a policy, but not one for immediate application. _Festina lente_
was his watchword for the moment, and he devoted himself to putting
new life into the sales of texts and to the issue of the “Branstone
+ Classics.” They were, one might note in passing, the Branstone +
Classics: his name loomed large and the names of their authors, the
insignificants like à Kempis and Bunyan, were properly small; and he
put the sign of the cross between the Branstone and the Classics. He
intended it to be his trade-mark, and if it were his trade-mark, why not
use it? It infringed nobody’s copyright.
Amongst it all, he had little enough time for Ada, and she knew how much
she gained by being a luxury instead of a habit. But Sam was not engaged
for the sake of being engaged, and as soon as he knew he had made no
mistake in his business venture was eager to be married. There were no
objections from Ada. This intermittent courtship, in which his duties
as a lover took second place to his activities as a business man, suited
Ada well, but marriage, finality, the bond suited her better.
Even to the end of that engagement it was things for Ada which
preoccupied him, rather than Ada herself, and he took the matter of
furnishing seriously--from a business point of view, interested less in
the furniture he bought than in the discounts he might, by this means or
that, secure. He suffered the usual surprise at the cost of mattresses
and kitchen equipment, but, to Ada, he appeared royally lavish. Ada did
not know of his legacy: she knew that Anne had told her on the top of
a fantastic tram-car that Sam had earned two pounds ten a week with
Travers, and the scale of this furnishing did not square with what a man
could save out of two pounds ten a week. It followed in Ada’s mind that
Anne had lied to her, malignantly misrepresenting Sam’s position to
frighten her; and the breach between Anne and Ada, which never had much
chance of closing, was permanently open.
One does not have old connections with an estate agency without being
able to rent a good house cheaply. She was going to be mistress of a
house which fell little short of the dreams of her boarding-school days.
It was certainly “stylish”; she was not sure that it was not positively
“smart.”
Madge wept on the night before her wedding. Ada did not weep. She
was too busy hugging herself because she had surmounted the perils of
courtship. She had accomplished her aim in life. She was going to be
married.