The success of Verrian did not come early, and it did not come easily.
He had been trying a long time to get his work into the best magazines,
and when he had won the favor of the editors, whose interest he had
perhaps had from the beginning, it might be said that they began to
accept his work from their consciences, because in its way it was so
good that they could not justly refuse it. The particular editor who
took Verrian’s serial, after it had come back to the author from the
editors of the other leading periodicals, was in fact moved mainly by
the belief that the story would please the better sort of his readers.
These, if they were not so numerous as the worse, he felt had now and
then the right to have their pleasure studied.
It was a serious story, and it was somewhat bitter, as Verrian himself
was, after his struggle to reach the public with work which he knew
merited recognition. But the world which does not like people to take
themselves too seriously also likes them to take themselves seriously,
and the bitterness in Verrian’s story proved agreeable to a number of
readers unexpectedly great. It intimated a romantic personality in the
author, and the world still likes to imagine romantic things of authors.
It likes especially to imagine them of novelists, now that there are no
longer poets; and when it began to like Verrian’s serial, it began to
write him all sorts of letters, directly, in care of the editor, and
indirectly to the editor, whom they asked about Verrian more than about
his story.
It was a man’s story rather than a woman’s story, as these may be
distinguished; but quite for that reason women seemed peculiarly taken
with it. Perhaps the women had more leisure or more courage to write to
the author and the editor; at any rate, most of the letters were from
women; some of the letters were silly and fatuous enough, but others
were of an intelligence which was none the less penetrating for being
emotional rather than critical. These maids or matrons, whoever or
whichever they were, knew wonderfully well what the author would be
at, and their interest in his story implied a constant if not a single
devotion. Now and then Verrian was tempted to answer one of them, and
under favor of his mother, who had been his confidant at every point
of his literary career, he yielded to the temptation; but one day there
came a letter asking an answer, which neither he nor his mother felt
competent to deal with. They both perceived that they must refer it to
the editor of the magazine, and it seemed to them so important that they
decided Verrian must go with it in person to the editor. Then he must
be so far ruled by him, if necessary, as to give him the letter and
put himself, as the author, beyond an appeal which he found peculiarly
poignant.
The letter, which had overcome the tacit misgivings of his mother as
they read it and read it again together, was from a girl who had perhaps
no need to confess herself young, or to own her inexperience of the
world where stories were written and printed. She excused herself with
a delicacy which Verrian’s correspondents by no means always showed for
intruding upon him, and then pleaded the power his story had over her as
the only shadow of right she had in addressing him. Its fascination,
she said, had begun with the first number, the first chapter, almost the
first paragraph. It was not for the plot that she cared; she had read
too many stories to care for the plot; it was the problem involved. It
was one which she had so often pondered in her own mind that she felt,
in a way she hoped he would not think conceited, almost as if the story
was written for her. She had never been able to solve the problem; how
he would solve it she did not see how she could wait to know; and here
she made him a confidence without which, she said, she should not have
the courage to go on. She was an invalid, and her doctor had told her
that, though she might live for months, there were chances that she
might die at any moment suddenly. He would think it strange, and it
was strange that she should tell him this, and stranger still that she
should dare to ask him what she was going to ask. The story had yet four
months to run, and she had begun to have a morbid foreboding that she
should not live to read it in the ordinary course. She was so ignorant
about writers that she did not know whether such a thing was ever done,
or could be done; but if he could tell her how the story was to come out
he would be doing more for her than anything else that could be done for
her on earth. She had read that sometimes authors began to print their
serial stories before they had written them to the end, and he might not
be sure of the end himself; but if he had finished this story of his,
and could let her see the last pages in print, she would owe him the
gratitude she could never express.
The letter was written in an educated hand, and there were no foibles
of form or excesses of fashion in the stationery to mar the character
of sincerity the simple wording conveyed. The postal address, with the
date, was fully given, and the name signed at the end was evidently
genuine.
Verrian himself had no question of the genuineness of the letter in
any respect; his mother, after her first misgivings, which were perhaps
sensations, thought as he did about it. She said the story dealt so
profoundly with the deepest things that it was no wonder a person,
standing like that girl between life and death, should wish to know how
the author solved its problem. Then she read the letter carefully over
again, and again Verrian read it, with an effect not different from that
which its first perusal had made with him. His faith in his work was so
great, so entire, that the notion of any other feeling about it was not
admissible.
“Of course,” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction, “I must show the
letter to Armiger at once.”
“Of course,” his mother replied. “He is the editor, and you must not do
anything without his approval.”
The faith in the writer of the letter, which was primary with him, was
secondary with her, but perhaps for that reason, she was all the more
firmly grounded in it.