_Lampard_. Books. 39 15 0
_Harker_. Furniture. 17 18 0
_Faucett_. Books. 22 16 6
_Williamson_. Books. 13 19 0
_Ambrose_. Books. 4 7 0
_Brough_. Tobacco. 9 19 0
_Clary_. Clothes. 44 4 0
_Miscellaneous_. Books, Clothes,
Stationery, Chemist,
etc., etc. about L50
A total of L202 18_s_. 6_d_. Practically he might say that L200 would
clear everything. Yet was L50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous
accounts? Here, for instance, was a bill of L11 for boots and another of
L14 for hats, apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all
that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that L250 was
required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's
letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him
that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account
of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind
reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood
darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom, after all, he owed only L4
7_s_., was the most threatening. In fact, he would obviously have to pay
the ruffian in full. That left only L15 13_s_. for current expenses to
Lady Day, or rather L14 12_s_., for, by the way, Worrall's guinea had
been left out of the reckoning.
Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for
himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what
she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who "came in" every morning,
that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He
might raise L50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six
fivers among the rest, would postpone any violent pressure for a while.
Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily
part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to
raise L50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be
a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly
deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills while Guy
dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months
had known their company. They were a melancholy sight when he had
stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf
looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred
volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a
pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise L50 must sell at an
average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of
value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to
him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more
than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more
books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows
for the further tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With
intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a
final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first
edition of Swinburne's _Essays and Studies_. That must go, for it might
count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's
Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete
works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the
later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon, which could
certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he
still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The
collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarme with the Rops
frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides,
he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was
Heredia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved
exceptions. He must preserve, too, the Italians (what a solace Leopardi
had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could
surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
_Amor, chee a nullo amato amar perdona,_
_Mi pres del costui piacer si forte,_
_Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona._
The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened
Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the
other:
_Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,_
_Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_
_Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_
_Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_
_La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante:_
And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged-robin which
unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve, and
which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
but Shakespeare went.
Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet with
the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
and smelled like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since
nearly every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment
when he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to
recall. Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and
wrote a letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom
he had never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the
booty.
"Well?" said Guy, painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
and shot his cuffs forward.
"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you thirty-five pounds for that
little lot."
Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.
"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."
"But surely fifty pounds...."
The assistant smiled in a superior way.
"We must _try_ and make a _little_ profit," he murmured.
"Oh, God, you'll do that! Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."
The assistant shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you thirty-five pounds I'm offering too
much as it is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really
any good to us."
"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
better."
He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
him such agony, and in the end had swindled him out of L15. The
assistant sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt, and
bowed himself out, saying that he would send for the books in the course
of the week.
Through the rain Guy went for consolation to Pauline. He told her of his
sacrifice, and she with all she could give of exquisite compassion
listened to his tale.
"But, Guy, my darling, why don't you borrow the money from Father? I am
sure he'd be delighted to lend it to you."
Guy shook his head.
"It's impossible. My debts must be paid by myself. I wouldn't even
borrow from Michael Fane. Dearest, don't look so sad. I would sell my
soul for you. Kiss me. Kiss me. I care for nothing but your kisses. You
must promise not to say a word of this to any one. Besides, it's no
sacrifice to do anything that brings our marriage nearer by an inch.
These debts are weighting me down. They stifle me. I am miserable, too,
about the poems. I haven't told you yet. It's really a joke in one way.
Yes, it's really funny. Worrall wrote to ask for a guinea before he read
them. Now, don't you think there is something very particularly humorous
in being charged a guinea by a reader? However, don't worry about that."
"How could he be so stupid?" she cried. "I hope you took them away from
him."
"Oh no. I sent the guinea. They must be published. Pauline, I must have
done something soon or I shall go mad! Surely you see the funny side of
his offer? I think the notion of my expecting to get five shillings
apiece out of a lot of readers, and my only reader's getting a guinea
out of me is funny. I think it's quite humorous."
"Nothing is funny to me that hurts you," Pauline murmured. "And I'm
heartbroken about the books."
"Oh, when I'm rich I can buy plenty."
"But not the same books."
"That's mere sentiment," he laughed. "And the only sentiment I allow
myself is in connection with things that you have sanctified."
Then he told her about the flowers pressed in the two volumes of Dante,
both in that same fifth canto.
"And almost, you know," Guy whispered, "I value most the ragged-robin,
because it commemorates the day you really began to love me."
"Ah no," she protested. "Guy, don't say that. I always loved you, but I
was shy before. I could not tell you. Sometimes I wish I were shy now.
It would make our love so much less of a strain."
"Is it a strain?"
"Oh, sometimes!" she cried, nearly in tears, her light-brown hair upon
his shoulder. "Oh yes, yes, Guy! I can't bear to feel.... I'm frightened
sometimes, and when Mother has been cross with me, I've not known what
to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at night?"
"Not if it worries you afterwards."
"Oh yes, it has, it has! Guy, when shall we be married?"
"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
Pauline. You do believe that?"
"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
darling, this year ... let it be this year."
Guy doled out very carefully the L35 he had accumulated by the sale of
his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with L7 apiece. Five more
creditors received L4, or rather one of them only L3 19_s_., so that the
guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
justice. There was, for the present nothing more to do but await the
verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
publisher to say this had been favorable enough to make Mr. Worrall wish
to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was much
excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of hopefulness.
He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all that evening
the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown personality shone
the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There seemed no limit to
what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy, and he and Pauline
became to themselves and to her family the hero and heroine of such an
adventure as never had been. In the course of the evening Guy had an
opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first time for a long
while he availed himself of it.
"Are you really going to talk to me, then?" she asked in mock surprise.
"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
love for Pauline.
"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."
"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
you had been rather unkind to Pauline."
"I haven't really."
"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
a Mozart symphony, so tranquil and gay and self-contained and perfectly
made did the Rectory seem. How clumsily I have plunged into that life,"
he sighed. "Really, Margaret, I feel sometimes like a wild beast that's
escaped from a menagerie and got into a concert of chamber-music. Look
here, you shall never have to grumble at me again. Now tell me, just to
show that you've forgiven my detestable irruption ... when Richard comes
back...."
Margaret gave him her hand for a moment, and looked down.
"And you're happy?" he asked, eagerly.
"I'm sure I shall be."
"Oh, you will be, you will be."
Pauline asked him afterwards what he had said to Margaret that could
have made her so particularly sweet, and when Guy whispered his
discovery, Pauline declared that the one thing necessary to make this
evening perfect had been just that knowledge.
"Guy, how clever of you to make her tell you what she will never tell
us. You don't know how much it has worried me to feel that you were
always angry with Margaret. How I've exaggerated everything! And what
friends you really are, you dears!"
"I've never been angry with her except on your account."
"But you won't ever be again, because I'm so foolish. I'm really a sort
of young Miss Verney."
They laughed at this idea of Pauline's, and soon it was time for Guy to
go. He thought luxuriously as he walked up the drive how large a measure
of good news he would bring back with him from London.
Guy was surprised to be kept waiting when he inquired for Mr. Worrall at
three o'clock on the following afternoon. All the way up in the train he
had thought so much about him and so kindlily, that it seemed he must
the very moment he entered the dusty Georgian ante-chamber shake his
publisher warmly by the hand. He had pictured him really as looking out
for his coming, almost as vividly indeed in his prefiguration of the
scene as to behold Mr. Worrall's face pressed tight against a pane and
thence disappearing to greet him from the step.
It was a shock to be invited to wait, and he repeated his name to the
indifferent clerk a little insistently.
"Mr. Worrall will see you in a minute," the clerk repeated.
Guy looked at the few objects of interest in the outer office, at the
original drawings of wrappers and frontispieces, at the signed
photograph of a moderately distinguished poet of the 'nineties, at a
depressing accumulation of still unsold volumes. The window was grimy,
and the raindrops seemed from inside to smear it as tears smudge the
face of a dirty child. The clerk pored over a ledger, and from the gray
afternoon the cries of the porters in Covent Garden came drearily in. At
last a bell sounded, and the clerk invited him "to step this way,"
lifting the counter and pointing up a narrow staircase beyond a glass
door. Guy went up, and at last entered Mr. Worrall's private office.
The publisher was a short, fat man with a bald and curiously conical
head, reminding Guy very much of a dentist in his manner. The poet sat
down and immediately caught in his first survey Mr. William Worrall's
caricature by Max Beerbohm. As a result of this observation Guy
throughout the interview could only perceive Mr. Worrall as the
caricaturist had perceived him, and like a shape in a dream his head all
the time grew more and more conical, until it seemed as if it would soon
bore a hole in the festooned ceiling.
"Well, Mr. Hazlewood," said the publisher, referring as he spoke to
Guy's card with what Guy thought was a rather unnecessary implication of
oblivion--"well, Mr. Hazlewood, my reader reports very favorably on your
poems, and there seems no reason why I should not publish them."
Guy bowed.
"No reason at all," Mr. Worrall continued. Then making a Gothic arch
with his fingers and looking up at the ceiling, he added:
"Though, of course, there will be a risk. However, my reader's opinion
was certainly favorable."
And so it ought to be, thought Guy, for a guinea.
"And I don't think," Mr. Worrall went on, "that in the circumstances we
need be very much afraid. Have you any ideas about the price at which
your sheaf, your little harvest is to be offered to the public?"
"Oh, I should leave that to you," said Guy, hastily.
"Precisely," said the publisher. "Yes, I think perhaps we might say five
shillings or ... of course it _might_ be done in paper in the Covent
Garden Series of Modern English Poets. Yes, the reader speaks most
highly of your work. You know the Covent Garden Series of Modern Poets?
In paper at half-a-crown net?"
"I should be very proud to appear in such a series," said Guy,
pleasantly. The series, as a matter of fact, was one that could do him
no discredit.
"It's a charming idea, isn't it?" said Mr. Worrall, fondling one of the
set that lay on his desk. "Every five volumes has its own floral emblem.
We've done The Rose, The Lily, The Violet. Let me see, your poems are
mostly about London, aren't they?"
"No, there isn't one about London," Guy pointed out, rather sharply.
"No, precisely; then of course they would _not_ come in The London Pride
set which still has a vacancy. Perhaps The Cowslip? What does the reader
say? Um, yes, pastoral! Precisely! Well, then why not let us decide that
your poems shall be Number Three in The Cowslip set. Capital! I think
you'd be wise to choose the Covent Garden series in paper. The cost of
publication is really less in that series, and I have always chosen my
poets so carefully that I can be sure the Press will pay attention
to--er neophytes. That is a great advantage for a young writer, as you
no doubt realize without my telling you?"
"The cost?" echoed Guy in a puzzled voice.
"It will run you in for about thirty pounds--as a guarantee of course.
The terms I suggest are simply a written agreement that you will
guarantee thirty pounds towards the cost. Your royalty to be ten per
cent. on the first thousand, twelve and a half on the next thousand, and
fifteen over two thousand. We might fairly say that in the event of
selling a thousand you would have nothing to pay, but, of course, if you
only sell twenty or thirty, you will have to--er--pay for your piping."
"And when should I have to produce this thirty pounds?" Guy asked.
"Well, I might ask for a cheque to be placed to my account on the day of
publication; and then, of course, I should send in a written statement
twice a year with the usual three months' margin for settlement."
"So that supposing my book came out in March?" Guy inquired.
"By the following November I should hope to have the pleasure of sending
you back your thirty pounds and a cheque on account of royalties," said
the publisher, briskly.
"They don't seem very good terms, somehow," said Guy.
Mr. Worrall shrugged his shoulders, and his conical head grew more
conical.
"You forget the advantage of being in the Covent Garden Series of Modern
Poets. However, don't, pray do not, intrust your manuscript to my
pilotage unless you are perfectly satisfied. I have a good many poems to
consider, you know."
"May I write within a week or so and give you my decision?" Guy asked.
"Naturally."
"Well, good-by."
"Good-by, Mr. Hazlewood. Clever fellow, isn't he?"
Guy had given a farewell glance at Max Beerbohm's caricature.
"Very clever," the poet fervently agreed.
Guy left Mr. William Worrall's office and wandered dismally across
Covent Garden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
L30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
friends, but, foreseeing now the inevitable question, "What are you
doing?" he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
debating the possibility of spending L30 in order to produce a book of
poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
Series of Modern Poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.
During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
would probably have given him the sum; but supposing a triumph lay
before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
help. Moreover, if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
consequent suspicion of all favorable criticism; it would never seem a
genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.
When he was back at Plashers Mead his resolution did not weaken; coldly
and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
bought the others. All that was left, indeed, were the cheapest and most
ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
so much exalted by the glories of abnegation that he began to despise
himself in his former attitude as a trifler among books and to say to
himself, as he looked at the volumes which had survived this heartless
clearance, that now he was set on the great fairway of literature
without any temptation to diverge up the narrow streams of personal
taste. The bookseller's assistant was not at all eager for the proffered
bargain, and in the end Guy could only manage to obtain the L30 and not,
as he had hoped, another L10 towards his debts. Nevertheless, he locked
the cheque up in his desk with the satisfaction of a man who for the
first time in his life earns money, and later on went across to tell
Pauline the result of the visit to London.
There was a smell of frost in the air that afternoon, and the sharpness
of the weather consorted well with Guy's mood, taking away the heavy
sense of disappointment and giving him a sparkling hopefulness. He and
Pauline went for a walk on Wychford down, and in the wintry cheer he
would not allow her to be cast down at the loss of his books or to
resent Worrall's reception of the poems.
"Everything is all right," he assured her. "The more we have to deny
ourselves now, the greater will be my success when it comes. The law of
compensation never fails. You and I are Davidsbuendler marching against
the Philistines. So be brave, my Pauline."
"I will try to be brave," she promised. "But it's harder for me because
I'm doing nothing."
"Oh, nothing," said Guy. "Nothing except endow me with passion and
ambition, with consolation ... oh, nothing, you foolish one."
"Am I really all that to you?"
"Forward," he shouted, hurling his stick in front of him and dragging
Pauline at the heels of Bob across turf that was already beginning to
crackle in the frost. Pauline could not resist his confidence, and when
at last they had to turn round and leave a smoky orange sunset, they
came home glowing to the Rectory, both in the highest spirits. Guy wrote
to the publisher that night and announced his intention of accepting the
"offer," a word which he could not resist framing with inverted commas
in case the sarcastic shaft might pierce Mr. Worrall's hard and conical
head.
Sitting back in his chair and thinking over his poems, all sorts of
verbal improvements suggested themselves to Guy; and he added a note
asking for the manuscript to be sent back for a few corrections. He
looked at his work with new eyes when it arrived, and bent with all the
enthusiasm that fruition gave his pen upon reviewing each line for the
hundredth time. He had enjoyed few things so well in his life as going
to bed tired with the intense consideration of a rhyme and falling
asleep in the ambition to reconsider it early next morning.
About ten days had passed since Guy sold the second lot of books, and
the poems were now as good as he could make them until print should
reveal numbers of fresh faults. He hoped that Worrall would hurry on
with the printing in order to allow him plenty of time for an even more
severe scrutiny; and he wrote to suggest April as the month of
publication, so anxious was he to have one specially bound copy to offer
Pauline on her birthday.
On the very morning when the manuscript had been wrapped up and was
ready to be sent off a disturbing letter arrived from Lampard, his
favorite Oxford bookseller, to say that, having made a purchase of books
two or three days ago, he had been surprised to find among them a large
number of volumes with Mr. Hazlewood's name inscribed on the fly-leaves,
for which Mr. Hazlewood had not yet paid him. He ventured to think it
was only by an oversight that Mr. Hazlewood had not paid his long
outstanding account before disposing of the books, and in short he was
anxious to know what Mr. Hazlewood intended to do about it. His bill,
L32 15_s_., was inclosed. Guy wrote back to say that it was indeed a
most unaccountable oversight on his part, but that he hoped, in order to
mark his sympathy with Mr. Lampard's point of view, to send him another
cheque very shortly, reminding the bookseller at the same time that he
had scarcely three weeks ago sent him L7 on account. Mr. Lampard, in his
reply, observed very plainly that Guy's letter was no reply at all and
threatened politely to make matters rather unpleasant if the bill were
not paid in full instantly. Guy tried once more a letter full of bland
promises, and received in response a letter from Mr. Lampard's
solicitor. The L30 intended for Mr. Worrall had to be sacrificed, and
even L2 15_s_. had to be taken from his current account. Savagely he
tore the paper from the manuscript, wrapped it up again, and despatched
it to another publisher. The bad luck of the Lampard business made him
only the more resolute not to invoke aid from his father or any one
else. He was a prey to a perverse determination to do everything
himself; but it was gloomy news that he had to tell Pauline that
afternoon, and she broke down and cried in her disappointment.