Before Pauline had been an hour longer in the Dares's drawing-room she
had become acquainted with many new people. She could not count them all
when she afterward tried to do so; the introductions had been very rapid
for some little time; one, so to speak, had trodden upon the heel of
another. Her meditated project had transpired, and not a few of her
recent acquaintances eyed her with a critical estimate of her capability
to become their future leader.
She soon found herself an object of such general scrutiny that she was
in danger of growing embarrassed to the verge of actual bewilderment.
She was now the centre of a little group, and every member of it
regarded her with more or less marked attentiveness.
"I've a tragic soul in a comic body, Mrs. Varick," said a fat little
spinster, with a round moon of a face and a high color, whose name was
Miss Upton. "That is the way I announce myself to all strangers. I
should have gone on the stage and played _Juliet_ if it hadn't been for
my unpoetic person. But imagine a bouncing, obese Juliet! No; I realized
that it would never do. I shall have to die with all my music in me, as
it were."
"A great many poets have done that," said a pale young gentleman with
very black hair and eyes, and an expression of ironical fatigue which
seldom varied. He was Mr. Leander Prawle, and he was known to have
written verses for which he himself had unbounded admiration. "Indeed,"
the young poet continued, lifting one thin, white hand to where his
moustache was not yet, "it is hard to sing a pure and noble song with
the discords of daily life about one."
"Not if you can make the world stop its discords and listen to you, Mr.
Prawle," said Pauline.
"Oh, Prawle can never do that," said a broad-shouldered young blond,
with a face full of drowsy reverie and hair rolled back from it in a
sort of yellow mane. "He's always writing transcendental verses about
Man with a capital M and the grand amelioration of Humanity with a
capital H. Prawle has no color. He hates an adjective as if it were a
viper. He should have lived with me in the _Quartier Latin_; he should
have read, studied and loved the divine Theophile Gautier--most perfect
of all French poets!"
The speaker fixed his sleepy blue eyes upon Leander Prawle while he thus
spoke. A slight smile touched his lips, leaving a faint dimple in either
smooth oval cheek. He was certainly very handsome, in an unconventional,
audacious way. His collar gave a lower glimpse of his firm yet soft
throat than usage ordinarily sanctions; the backward wave of his hair
was certainly against any conceded form. He had been made known to
Pauline as Mr. Arthur Trevor, and she had felt surprised at his name
being so English; she had expected to find it French; Mr. Trevor had
appeared to her extremely French.
"When you speak of Paris and of Gautier," she now said to him, "you
really relieve me, Mr. Trevor. I was so prepared, on first meeting you,
to find that you were not an American."
"Oh, Trevor is very French," said Leander Prawle coldly.
Trevor laughed, lifting one hand, on the middle finger of which was the
tawny tell-tale mark of the confirmed cigarette-smoker.
"And my friend, Prawle," he said, "is enormously English."
"Not English--American," slowly corrected Leander Prawle.
"It is the same thing!" cried Arthur Trevor. "He is cold-blooded, Mrs.
Varick," the young gentleman continued, with emphasis and a certain
excitement. "We are always fighting, Prawle and I. I tell Prawle that in
his own beloved literature, he should have but one model outside of
Shakespeare. That is Keats--the sweet, sensuous, adorable Keats."
"I loathe Keats," said Leander Prawle, as if he were repeating some
fragment of a litany. "I think him a word-monger."
"Aha," laughed Arthur Trevor, showing his white, sound teeth, "Keats was
an immense genius. He knew the art of expression."
"And he expressed nothing," said Leander Prawle.
"He expressed beauty," declared Trevor. "Poetry is that. There is
nothing else. Even the great master, Hugo, would tell you so."
"Hugo is a mere rhapsodist," said Leander Prawle.
Trevor laughed again. He gave a comic, exaggerated shudder while he did
so. He now exclusively addressed Pauline. "My dear Mrs. Varick," he
said, "are you not horrified?"
Before Pauline could answer, the fat little Miss Upton spoke. "Oh, Mr.
Trevor," she said, "you know that though you and Mr. Prawle are always
quarrelling about poetry, and belong to two different schools, still,
each of you, in his way, is admirable. You are the North and South
poles."
"No," said Arthur Trevor, "for the North and South poles never come
together, while Prawle and I are continually clashing."
"It looks very much as if chaos were the result," said Pauline.
Arthur Trevor gazed at her reproachfully. "I hope you don't mean that,"
he said. He put his arm while he spoke, about the neck of a short and
fleshy man, with a bald, pink scalp and a pair of dull, uneasy eyes.
"Here is our friend, Rufus Corson," he continued. "Rufus has not spoken
a word to you since he was presented, Mrs. Varick. But he's a
tremendously important fellow. He doesn't look it, but he is the poet of
death, decay, and horror."
"Good Heavens!" murmured Pauline playfully.
"It is true," pursued Arthur Trevor. "Rufus, here, is a wonderful
fellow, and he has written some verses that will one day make him famous
as the American Baudelaire."
"I have not read Baudelaire," said Pauline.
Mr. Corson at once answered her. He spoke in a forced, loitering way. He
wore the dress of a man who scorns all edicts of mode, and yet he was
very commonplace in appearance.
"The literature of the present age is in a state of decadence," he said.
Mr. Corson, himself, looked to be in a state of plump prosperity; even
his rosy baldness had a vivid suggestion of youth and of the enjoyments
which youth bestows. "I write hopelessly," he continued, "because I live
in a hopeless time. My 'Sonnet to a Skull' has been praised, because"--
"It has _not_ been praised," said Leander Prawle firmly and severely.
Mr. Corson regarded Prawle with an amused pity. "It has been praised by
people whom you don't know," he said, "and who don't want to know you."
"It is horrible," enunciated Leander Prawle, while he appealingly rolled
toward Pauline his dark eyes, which the confirmed pallor of his face
made still darker. "Mrs. Varick," he went on, "I am sure that you will
agree with me in asserting that skulls and skeletons and disease are not
fit subjects for poetical treatment."
"Yes," answered Pauline, "I think that they are not beautiful--and for
this reason I should condemn them."
"Then you will make a great mistake, Mrs. Varick," now quickly
interposed Arthur Trevor. He passed one hand backward along the yellow
mane of his hair while he thus spoke. But he still kept an arm about the
neck of his friend, Corson. "I maintain," he continued, "that Corson has
a perfect right to sing of autumnal things. A corpse is as legitimate a
subject as a sunset. They are both morbid; they both mean what is
moribund."
"Oh, but they are so different!" exclaimed the fat Miss Upton. "One is
the work of Gawd, to delight man, and the other is--oh, dear! the other
is--well, it's only a mere dead body! None of the great poets have ever
written in that dreadful style, Mr. Trevor. Of course, I know that Mr.
Corson has done some _powerful_ work, but is it right to give people the
shudders and horrors, as he does? Why not have sunshine in poetry,
instead of gloom and misery?"
"Sunshine is commonplace," said Arthur Trevor.
"Very," said Mr. Corson.
"Sunshine means hope," declared Leander Prawle. "It means evolution,
development, progress."
"Art is art!" cried Trevor. "Sing of what you please, so long as your
_technique_ is good, so long as you have the right _chic_, the right
_facon_, the right way of putting things!"
"True," said Corson. "I write of skulls and corpses because you can get
new effects out of them. They haven't been done to death, like faith,
and philanthropy, and freedom. Optimism is so tiresome, nowadays. All
the Greeks are dead. Notre Dame stands intact, but the Parthenon is a
ruin."
Leander Prawle shivered. "You can make clever rhymes about
charnel-houses," he said, "but that is not poetry. You can deplore the
allurements of women with green eyes and stony hearts, but you degrade
womanhood while you do so. You"--
"Are you not bored?" whispered Kindelon, in his mellow Irish brogue to
Pauline, as he just then stole to her side. "If so, let us walk away
together."
Pauline slipped her hand into his proffered arm. "I was not bored," she
said, as they moved off, "but I was just beginning to be. Are there
nothing but belligerent poets here to-night?"
"Oh, you will find other sorts of people."
"But, who are these three wranglers, Mr. Trevor, Mr. Prawle, and Mr.
Corson?"
Kindelon laughed. "They are fanatics," he said. "Each one believes
himself a Milton in ability."
"Are they successful?"
"They send poems (with stamps inclosed) to the magazines, and have them
rejected. They make believe to despise the magazines, but secretly they
would give worlds to see their names in print. Heaven knows, the
magazines print rubbish enough. But they are sensible in rejecting
Arthur Trevor's poems, which are something in this style--I quote from
memory:--
"'The hot, fierce tiger-lily madly yearns
To kill with passionate poison the wild moth
That reels in drunken ecstasy above
Its gorgeous bosom....'
"Or in rejecting that bald-pated posing Corson's trash, which runs like
this:--
"'Death is far better than the loathsome lot
Of kissing lips that soon must pale and rot,
Of clasping forms that soon must cease their breath
Within the black embrace of haughty death!'
"Or in declining to publish Mr. Leander Prawle's buncombe, which sounds
somewhat after this fashion:
"'Man shall one day develop to a god,
Though now he walks unwinged, unaureoled....
To-day we moil and mope--to-morrow's dawn
Shall bring us pinions to outsoar the stars.'
"That's the sort of the thing this brave trio does. All poets are
partially mad, of course. But then _they_ are mad without being poets;
it's this that makes their lunacy so tiresome."
"And are they always quarrelling when they meet?"
"Oh, they do it for effect. They are privately very good friends. They
are all equally obscure; they've no cause, yet, to hate one another. If
one of them should get a book published before either of the other two,
they would probably both abominate him in good earnest."
Just then a tall, sallow gentleman, with small, gray eyes and a nose
like the beak of a carnivorous bird, laid his hand on Kindelon's sleeve.
"Powers has just asked me to write the Fenimore Cooper article for his
new American Cyclopaedia," declared this gentleman, whose name was
Barrowe, and whom Pauline had already met.
"Well, you're precisely the man," replied Kindelon. "Nobody can do it
better."
"Precisely the man!" exclaimed Mr. Barrowe. "Perhaps I would be if I
were not so overwhelmed with other duties--so unmercifully handicapped."
He turned to Pauline. "I am devoted to literature, madam," he went on,
"but I am forced into commerce for the purpose of keeping starvation
away from my family and myself. There is the plain, unvarnished truth.
And now, as it is, I return home after hours of hard, uncongenial work,
to snatch a short interval between dinner-time and bed-time for whatever
I can accomplish with my poor tired pen. My case is a peculiar and
pathetic one--and this Powers ought to understand it. But, no; he comes
to me in the coolest manner, and makes my doing that article for him a
question of actual good-nature and friendly support. So, of course, I
consent. But it shows a great want of delicacy in Powers. He knows well
enough that I am obliged to neglect many social duties--that I should
not even be here at this moment--that besides my daily business I am
besieged with countless applications from literary people for all sorts
of favors. Why, this very week, I have received no less than fourteen
requests for my autograph. How are my wife and little ones to live if I
am perpetually to oblige inconsiderate and thoughtless friends?"
"Your complaints would indicate," said Kindelon, rather dryly, "that
Powers has not offered you the requisite cheque for proposed services."
Mr. Barrowe gave an irritated groan. "Kindelon!" he exclaimed, "do you
know you can be a very rude man when you want?"
"You've told me that several times before, Barrowe," said Kindelon,
quite jovially, moving on with Pauline.
He did this briskly enough to prevent the indignant Mr. Barrowe from
making any further reply.
"I'm afraid you'll have trouble with that man," he said to Pauline,
presently, "if you admit him into your _salon_."
"I have read some of his essays," she answered. "They are published
abroad, you know. I thought them very clever."
"So they are--amazingly. But Barrowe himself is a sort of monomaniac. He
believes that he is the most maltreated of authors. He is forever boring
his friends with these egotistic lamentations. Now, the truth of the
matter is that he has more to solidly congratulate himself upon than
almost any author whom I know. He was sensible enough, years ago, to
embark in commercial affairs. I forget just what he does; I think he is
a wholesale druggist, or grocer. He writes brilliantly and with
extraordinary speed. His neglect of social duties, as he calls them, is
the purest nonsense. He goes wherever he is asked, and finds plenty of
time for work besides. This request from Powers secretly pleases him.
The new Cyclopaedia is going to be a splendid series of volumes. But
Barrowe must have his little elegiac moan over his blighted life."
"And the applications from fellow-authors?" asked Pauline. "The requests
for autographs?"
"Pshaw! those are a figment of his fancy, I suspect. He imagines that he
is of vast importance in the literary world. His sensitiveness is
something ridiculous. He's a far worse monologuist than I am, which is
surely saying a great deal; but if you answer him he considers it an
interruption, and if you disagree with him he ranks it as impertinence.
I think he rather likes me because I persistently, fearlessly, and
relentlessly do both. But with all his faults, Barrowe has a large, warm
heart. Still, it's astonishing how a fine and true character can often
enshroud itself with repellent mannerisms, just as a firm breadth of
sea-rock will become overcrusted with brittle barnacles.... Ah,
Whitcomb, good evening."
A corpulent man, with silver-gray hair and a somewhat pensive
expression, was the recipient of Kindelon's last cordial sentence of
salutation. After he had made the needful introduction, Kindelon said,
addressing Pauline while he regarded Mr. Whitcomb,--
"This is the author of no less than five standard histories."
"Kindelon is very good to call them standard, Mrs. Varick," said Mr.
Whitcomb, in a voice quite as pensive as his face. "I wish that a few
thousands more would only share his opinion."
"Oh, but they are gradually getting to do it, my dear Whitcomb!"
declared Kindelon. "Don't make any mistake on that point. A few days ago
I chanced to meet your publisher, Sours. Now, an author must stand
pretty sure of success when his publisher pays him a round compliment."
"What did Sours say?" asked Mr. Whitcomb, with an almost boyish
eagerness.
"He said," exclaimed Kindelon, "that Whitcomb was our coming American
historian. There, my dear sir, what do you think of that?"
Mr. Whitcomb sadly shook his silver-gray head. "I've been coming," he
murmured, "ever since I was twenty-eight, and I shall be fifty-seven
next May. I can't say that I think Sours's compliment meant much. It's
got to be a sort of set phrase about me, that I'm coming. It never
occurs to anybody to say that I've come, and I suppose it will not if I
live to be eighty and totter round with white hair. No, I shall always
be coming, coming...."
As the gentleman repeated this final word he smiled with a kind of weary
amiability, still shaking his gray head; and a moment later he had
passed from sight.
"Mrs. Varick," now said a cold, rasping voice to Pauline, "have you
managed to enjoy yourself, thus far? If you recollect, we were
introduced a little while ago ... Miss Cragge, you know."
"Oh, yes, I remember, Miss Cragge," said Pauline. "And I find it very
pleasant here, I assure you."
Miss Cragge had given Kindelon a short nod, which he returned somewhat
faintly. She was a lady of masculine height, with a square-jawed face, a
rather mottled complexion, and a pair of slaty-blue eyes that looked at
you very directly indeed from beneath a broad, flat forehead. She was
dressed in a habit of some shabby gray stuff, and wore at her throat a
large antique cameo pin, which might have been unearthed from an
ancestral chest near the lavendered laces and faded love-letters of a
long-dead grandmother. She was by no means an agreeable-looking lady;
she was so ungentle in her quick, snapping speech and so unfeminine in
her gaunt, bony, and almost towering figure, that she promptly impressed
you with an idea of Nature having maliciously blended the harsher traits
of both sexes in one austere personality, and at the same time leaving
the result sarcastically feminine. She seldom addressed you without
appearing to be bent on something which she thought you might have to
tell her, or which she would like you very much to reveal. Her
affirmations often had the sound of interrogatories. She had none of the
tact, the grace, the _finesse_ of the ordinary "interviewer;" she went
to her task rough-handed and undexterous.
"I'm glad you like it," she at once said to Pauline. "I know you've
moved a good deal in fashionable society, and I should be gratified to
learn how this change affects you."
"Quite refreshingly," returned Pauline.
"You don't feel like a fish out of water, then?" said Miss Cragge, with
a sombre little laugh. "Or like a cat in a strange garret?... I saw you
at the opera the other evening. You were with Mrs. Poughkeepsie and her
daughter; I was down stairs in the orchestra. I go a good deal to places
of amusement--in a professional way, you know; I'm a dead-head, as the
managers call it--I help to paper the house."
"You are rather too idiomatic, I fear," now said Kindelon, with a chilly
ring in his tones, "for Mrs. Varick to understand you."
"Idiomatic is very good--excellent, in fact," replied Miss Cragge, with
a pleasantry that barely missed being morose. "I suppose you mean that I
am slangy. You're always trying to snub me, Kindelon, but I don't mind
you. You can't snub me--nobody can. I'm too thick-skinned." Here the
strangely self-poised lady laughed again, if the grim little sound that
left her mirthless lips could really be called a laugh. "I know the
Poughkeepsies by sight," she continued, re-addressing Pauline, "because
it's my business as a newspaper correspondent to get all the fashionable
items that I can collect, and whenever I'm at any public place of
amusement where there's a chance of meeting those upper-ten people, I
always keep my eyes and ears open as wide as possible. I'm correspondent
for eight weekly papers outside of New York, besides doing work for two
of the city dailies. I never saw anything like the craze for society
gossip nowadays. One good story from high life, with a moderate spice of
scandal in it, will pay me six times as well as anything else. They say
I'm always hunting about for material, and no wonder that I am. The
thing is bread and butter to me--and not much butter, either. You see,
the rich classes here are getting to represent so large a body; so many
people are trying to push themselves into society. And when they can't
elbow their way into the swell balls and parties, why, the next best
thing is to read about who were there, and what they had on, and who led
the German, and what they ate and drank, and how the house was
decorated. It seemed a queer enough business for me, at first; I started
with grand ideas, but I've had to come down a good many pegs; I've had
to pull in my horns. And now I don't mind it a bit; I suppose Kindelon
would say that I enjoyed it ... eh, Kindelon? Why, Mrs. Varick, I used
to write book-reviews for the New York 'Daily Criterion,' and my pay
kept growing less and less. One day I wrote a very careful review of a
book that I admired greatly--it was George Eliot's 'Middlemarch,' in
fact. The editor-in-chief sent for me. He named the article, and then
said, 'I hear that you wrote it. It's a very fine piece of work.'
'Thank you, sir,' I replied, with a tingle of gratification. 'Yes, a
very fine piece of work, indeed,' continued the editor; 'I read it with
much pleasure. But don't do that sort of thing again, Miss Cragge--we've
no use for it on the 'Criterion.' After that I became less ambitious and
more mercenary. There's no use pounding against stone walls. The reading
public will have what it wants, and if I don't give it to them, somebody
else will be only too glad to take my place.... By the way, Mrs. Varick,
do you think that Miss Poughkeepsie is going to marry that Scotch
earl--Lord Glenartney?"
"I can't tell you, really," said Pauline. She had made up her mind to
dislike Miss Cragge very much indeed. At the same time she felt a
certain pity for her.
Kindelon began to press quietly forward, and Pauline, who still had his
arm, by no means resisted this measure.
"I've been very candid," called Miss Cragge, while the two were slipping
away from her. She spoke with even more than her usual blunt, curt
manner. "It was because I knew Kindelon would be apt to say hard things
of me, and I wanted to spike a few of his guns. But I hope I haven't
shocked you, Mrs. Varick."
"Oh, not at all," said Pauline, as blandly as her feelings would
permit....
"You were a good deal disgusted, no doubt," said Kindelon, when they
were beyond Miss Cragge's hearing.
"She isn't the most charming person I have ever met," replied Pauline.
"I will grant you that."
"How amiably you denounce her! But I forget," he added. "Such a little
time ago you were prepared to be exhilarated and ... what was the other
word?... to fraternize with most of the company here."
She chose not to heed the last stroke of light irony.
"Are you and Miss Cragge enemies?" she asked.
"Well, I abominate her, and she knows it. I rarely abominate anybody,
and I think she knows that also. To my mind she is a conscienceless,
hybrid creature. She is a result of a terrible modern license--the
license of the Press. There is a frank confession, for a newspaper man
like myself. But, between ourselves, I don't know where modern
journalism, in some of its ferocious phases, is going to stop, unless it
stops at a legislative veto. Miss Cragge would sacrifice her best
friend (if she had any friends--which she hasn't) to the requirements
of what she calls 'an item.' She thinks no more of assailing a
reputation, in her quest for so-termed 'material,' than a rat would
think of carrying off a lump of cheese. She knows very well that I will
never forgive her for having printed a lot of libellous folly about a
certain friend of mine. He had written a rather harmless and weak novel
of New York society, New York manners. Miss Cragge had some old grudge
against him; I think it was on account of an adverse criticism which she
believed him to have written regarding some dreary, amateurish poems for
whose author she had conceived a liking. This was quite enough for Miss
Cragge. She filled a column of the Rochester "Rocket," or the Topeka
"Trumpet," or some such sheet, with irate fictions about poor Charley
Erskine. He had no redress, poor fellow; she declared that he had
slandered a pure, high-minded lady in society here by caricaturing her
in his novel. She parodied some of poor Charley's rather fragile verses;
she accused him of habitually talking fatuous stuff at a certain
Bohemian sort of beer-garden which he had visited scarcely five times
within that same year. Oh, well, the whole thing was so atrocious that I
offered my friend the New York "Asteroid" in which to hurl back any
epistolary thunderbolt he should care to manufacture. But Charley
wouldn't; he might have written a bad novel and worse poems, but he had
sense enough to know that his best scorn lay in severe silence. Still,
apart from all this, I have excellent reasons for shunning Miss Cragge,
and I have told you some of them. She is the most aggravated form of the
American newspaper correspondent, prowling about and seeking whom she
may devour. I consider her a dangerous person, and I advise you not to
allow her within your _salon_."
"Oh, I shan't," quickly answered Pauline. "You need not have counselled
me on that point. It was quite unnecessary. I intend to pick and
choose." She gave a long, worried sigh, now, which Kindelon just heard
above the conversational hum surrounding them. "I am afraid it all comes
to picking and choosing, everywhere," she went on. "Aunt Cynthia
Poughkeepsie is perpetually doing it in _her_ world, and I begin to
think that there is none other where it must not be done."
Kindelon leaned his handsome crisp-curled head nearer to her own; he
fixed his light-blue eyes, in which lay so warm and liquid a sparkle,
intently upon the lifted gaze of Pauline.
"You are right," he said. "You will learn that, among other lessons,
before you are much older. There is no such thing as not picking and
choosing. Whatever the grade of life, it is always done by those who
have any sort of social impulse. I believe it is done in Eighth Avenue
and Avenue A, when they give parties in little rooms of tenement houses
and hire a fiddler to speed the dance. There is always some Michael or
Fritz who has been ostracized. The O'Haras and the Schneiders follow the
universal law. Wherever three are gathered together, the third is pretty
sure to be of questionable welcome. This isn't an ideal planet, my dear
lady, and 'liberty' and 'fraternity' are good enough watchwords, but
'equality' never yet was one;--if I didn't remember my Buckle, my
Spencer, my Huxley, and my dear old Whig Macaulay, I should add that it
never _would_ be one."
Just at this point Kindelon and Pauline found themselves face to face
with two gentlemen who were both in a seemingly excited frame of mind.
Pauline remembered that they had both been presented to her not long
ago. She recollected their names, too; her memory had been nerved to
meet all retentive exigencies. The large, florid man, with the bush of
sorrel beard, was Mr. Bedlowe, and the smaller, smooth-shaven man, with
the consumptive stoop and the professorial blue spectacles, was Mr.
Howe.
Mr. Howe and Mr. Bedlowe were two novelists of very opposite repute.
Kindelon had already caught a few words from the latter, querulously
spoken.
"Ah, so you think modern novel-writing a sham, my dear Howe?" he said,
pausing with his companion, while either gentleman bowed recognition to
Pauline. "Isn't that rank heresy from the author of a book that has just
been storming the town?"
"My book didn't storm the town, Kindelon," retorted Mr. Howe, lifting a
hand of scholarly slimness and pallor toward his opaque goggles. "I wish
it had," he proceeded, somewhat wearily. "No; Bedlowe and I were having
one of our old quarrels. I say that we novelists of the Anglo-Saxon
tongue are altogether too limited. That is what I mean by declaring that
modern novel-writing is a sham."
"He means a great deal more, I'm sorry to say," here cried Mr. Bedlowe,
who had a habit of grasping his sorrel beard in one hand and thrusting
its end toward his hirsute lips as though they were about to be allured
by some edible mouthful.
"He means, Kindelon, that because we haven't the shocking immoral
latitude of the French race, we can't properly express ourselves in
fiction. And he goes still further--Howe is always going still further
every fresh time that I meet him. He says that if the modern novelist
dared to express himself on religious subjects, he would be an
agnostic."
"Precisely!" cried Mr. Howe, with the pale hand wavering downward from
the eerie glasses. "But he doesn't dare! If he did, his publisher
wouldn't publish him!"
"My publisher publishes _me_!" frowned Mr. Bedlowe.
"Oh, you're a pietist," was the excited answer. "At least, you go in for
that when you write your novels. It pays, and you do it. I don't say
that you do it _because_ it pays, but ..."
"You infer it," grumbled Mr. Bedlowe, "and that's almost the same as
saying it." He visibly bristled here. "I've got a wholesome faith," he
proceeded, with hostility. "That's why I wrote 'The Christian Knight in
Armor' and 'The Doubtful Soul Satisfied.' Each of them sold seventy
thousand copies apiece. There's a proof that the public wanted
them--that they filled a need."
"So does the 'Weekly Wake-Me-Up,'" said Mr. Howe, with mild disdain. "My
dear Bedlowe, you have two qualities as a modern novel-writer which are
simply atrocious--I mean, plot and piety. The natural result of these is
popularity. But your popularity means nothing. You utterly neglect
analysis"--
"I despise analysis!"
"You entirely ignore style"--
"I express my thoughts without affectation."
"Your characters are wholly devoid of subtlety"--
"I abhor subtlety!"
"You preach sermons"--
"Which thousands listen to!"
"You fail completely to represent your time"--
"My readers, who represent my time, don't agree with you."
"You end your books with marriages and christenings in the most absurdly
old-fashioned way"--
"I end a story as every story _should_ end. Sensible people have a
sensible curiosity to know what becomes of hero and heroine."
"Curiosity is the vice of the vulgar novel-reader. Psychological
interest is the one sole interest that should concern the more cultured
mind. And though you may sell your seventy thousand copies, I beg to
assure you that ..."
"Had we not heard quite enough of that hot squabble?" said Kindelon to
Pauline, after he had pressed with her into other conversational
regions, beyond the assault and defence of these two inimical novelists.
"I rather enjoyed it," said Pauline.
"They would have presently dragged us into their argument," returned
Kindelon. "It was just as well that we retired without committing
ourselves by an opinion. I should have sided with Howe, though I think
him an extremist."
"I know some of Mr. Bedlowe's novels," said Pauline. "They are very
popular in England. I thought them simply dire."
"And Howe is a real artist. He has a sort of cult here, though not a
large one. What he says is true enough, in the main. The modern novelist
dares not express his religious views, unless they be of the most
conventional and tame sort. And how few fine minds are there to-day
which are not rationalistic, unorthodox? A man like Bedlowe coins money
from his milk-and-water platitudes, while Howe must content himself with
the recognition of a small though devout circle.... Did you meet the
great American dramatist, by the way? I mean Mr. Osgood Paiseley. He is
standing over yonder near the mantel ... that slender little man with
the abnormally massive head."
"Yes, I met him," returned Pauline. "He is coming this way."
"Have you any new dramatic work in preparation, Paiseley?" asked
Kindelon, as the gentleman who had just been mentioned now drew near
himself and Pauline.
"Yes," was Mr. Paiseley's reply. He spoke with a nasal tone and without
much grammatical punctilio. "I've got a piece on hand that I'm doing for
Mattie Molloy. Do you know her at all? She does the song-and-dance
business with comedy variations. I think the piece'll be a go; it'll
just suit her, I guess."
"Your last melodrama, 'The Brand of Cain,' was very successful, was it
not?" pursued Kindelon.
"Well," said Mr. Paiseley, as he threw back an errant lock or two from
his great width of swollen-looking forehead, "I'm afraid it isn't going
to catch on so very well, after all. The piece is all right, but the
company can't play it. Cooke guys his part because he don't like it, and
doesn't get a hand on some of the strongest lines that have been put
into any actor's mouth for the past twenty years--fact! as sure as
you're born! Moore makes up horribly, and Kitty Vane is so over-weighted
that Miss Cowes, in a straight little part of only a few lengths, gets
away with her for two scenes; and Sanders is awfully preachy. If I could
have had my own say about casting the piece, we'd have turned away money
for six weeks and made it a sure thing for the road. I mean for the big
towns, not the one-night places; it's got too many utility-people to
make it pay there. But I shan't offer anything more to the
stock-theatres; after this, I'm going to fit stars."
Pauline turned a covertly puzzled look upon her companion. She seemed to
be hearing a new language. And yet, although the words were all familiar
enough, their collocation mystified her.
"You think there is more profit, then, in fitting stars," said Kindelon,
"if there is less fame?"
Mr. Paiseley laughed, with not a little bitterness. "Oh, fame," he said,
"is the infirmity of the young American dramatist. I've outgrown it. I
used to have it. But what's the use of fighting against France and
England in the stock-theatres? Give me a fair show there, and I can draw
bigger money than Dennery or Sardou--don't you make any mistake! But
those foreign fellows are always crowding us natives out of New York.
The managers hem and smirk over our pieces, and say they're good enough,
but they've got something that's running well at the Porte Sang Martang
or the Odeun in Paris. The best we can do is to have our plays done by a
scratch company at some second-rate house, or, if it's a first-class
house, they give us bad time. No, I fit travelling stars at so much cash
down, and so much royalty afterward--that is, when I can't get a
percentage on the gross. I don't work any more for fame; I want my
dinner...."
"Your friend takes a rather commercial view of the American stage," said
Pauline to Kindelon, after they had again moved onward.
"I am sorry to say that it is almost the only view taken by any of our
dramatists. Paiseley is thoroughly representative of his class. They
would all like to write a fine play, but they nearly all make the
getting of money their primary object. Now, I do not believe that the
lust of gain has ever been a foremost incentive in the production of any
great mental achievement. Our novels and poems are to-day better than
our plays, I think, because they are written with a more artistic and a
less monetary stimulus. The rewards of the successful playwright may
mean a fortune to him; he always remembers that when he begins, and he
usually begins for the reason that he does remember it...."
Pauline had glimpses of not a few more individualities, that evening,
before she at length took her leave.
"Well, how have you enjoyed it?" asked Kindelon, as they were being
driven home together.
"I have not entirely enjoyed it," was the slow answer.
"You have been disappointed?"
"Yes."
"But your purpose of the _salon_ still remains good?"
"Indeed it does!" she exclaimed with eagerness. "I shall begin my
work--I shall issue my invitations in a few days. Mrs. Dares will no
doubt supply me with a full list of names and addresses."
"And you will invite everybody?"
"Oh, by no means. I shall pick and choose."
"Beware of calamity!" said Kindelon. And his voice was so odd a blending
of the jocose and serious that she could ill guess whether he were in
earnest or not.