ARCHIE PAYS ATTENTION.
Roseleaf took rooms at his old lodgings in the city, and set in earnest
about the work of beginning his great novel. He had interviews with Mr.
Gouger, at which he detailed the slight thread of plot which he already
had in mind, profiting by the critic's shrewd suggestions. It was
decided that he should portray, at the beginning, a youth much like
himself, who was to fall in love with an angelically pure maiden. The
outline of their respective characters were to be sketched with care,
and sundry obstacles to their union were to be developed as the story
progressed. Gouger warned his young friend not to write too fast, and to
content himself for the present with delineating the phase of love with
which he had become familiar.
"Later on," he said, "when your hero finds that this girl is not all his
bright fancy painted her--when it is proved beyond a doubt that she has
played him false, that she has another lover--"
Roseleaf turned pale.
"But that will never be!" he interrupted.
"It will, of course--in the story," corrected Gouger. "She will lead him
a race that will make him an enemy to the entire sex, if she is used for
all the dramatic effect possible. People expect to find immaculate
purity in the earlier chapters of a story, as they do in small children.
With the progress of the action they look for something more exciting.
To sketch a seraph who remains one would only be to repeat the failure
you made in your other effort--the one you brought to me the day I met
you first. It is not the glory of heaven that attracts audiences to our
churches, but the dramatic quality of hell. A sermon without a large
spice of the devil in it would be much worse than a rendition of Hamlet
minus the Prince. Put your heroine in the clouds, if you will, at the
beginning. The higher she goes, the greater will be her fall, and the
greater, consequently, your triumph."
The young novelist shivered as he listened to these expressions. How
could he build a heroine on the model of Daisy Fern, and conceive the
possibility that she would ever allow her white robes to touch the
earth? He might have constructed such a plot with Millicent as the
central figure, though that would be by no means easy; but Daisy!
Impossible! He asked the critic if it would not do to send the hero of
the tale to perdition, while leaving his sweetheart immaculate to the
close.
"No," said Gouger, decidedly. "A man's fall is not much of a fall, any
way you put it. The public is not interested in such matters. It demands
a female sacrifice, like some of the ancient gods, and it will not be
appeased with less. I expect you to be new and original in your
treatment of the theme, but the subject itself is as old as fiction. You
have too little imagination, as I have told you before. You must
cultivate that talent. Having conceived your paragon, imagine her placed
under temptations she cannot resist; surround her with an environment
from which she cannot break; place her in situations that leave her no
escape."
Roseleaf shook his head.
"I am afraid I never shall be able to do it," he said.
"Pshaw! Don't talk of failure at this stage of the game. All you have to
do is to introduce upon the scene a thoroughly unprincipled man of good
address, who is fertile in expedients. You will find your model for that
among a dozen of your acquaintances. Why, take Archie Weil, and hold him
in your mind till you are saturated with him."
What did Mr. Gouger mean? That Mr. Weil would actually do these dreadful
things, would in his own person perpetrate the outrage of winning a pure
girl to shame. It seemed childish to ask such a question, and yet such a
meaning could easily be taken from what the critic had said. No, no! All
he could have meant was that Mr. Weil might serve as a figure on which
to lay these sins--that he could be carried in the writer's mind, as a
costumer uses a stuffed frame to hang garments on while in the process
of manufacture.
"Then there is Boggs," added Gouger, with a laugh. "You ought to find
some place for a fellow like him, if only for the comic parts of your
novel, and there must be a little humor in a book that is to suit the
mass. A writer for a magazine said recently with much truth, 'He who
would hit the popular taste must aim low.' I think Boggs could furnish
the cheap fun for an ordinary novel, without too great a wear on the
writer. Go ahead, my boy. Write a half dozen chapters in your own
idyllic way, and then get Archie to take you to a few places where your
mind will be turned to opposite scenes. It takes all sorts of edibles to
suit the modern palate."
So Roseleaf wrote, slowly, patiently, with devotion to his art, until he
had completed five chapters of his story. And Gouger read it and went
into ecstacies, declaring it the best foundation he had ever seen for a
most entrancing romance.
"He has wrought his people up to such a superlative height," said the
critic to Mr. Weil, "that the _chute_ will be simply tremendous! How
simply, how elegantly his sentences flow! If he can handle the necessary
wickedness that must follow, the sale of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' or 'Thou
Shalt Not,' will be eclipsed without the least doubt. But, the question
still is, _can_ he?"
"There's no such question," was the response. "He must, that's the way
to put it. Confound it, he shall! And the next thing for him to do is
to take a few visits with me to the underground regions, where he can
get such slight shocks to his literary system as will enable him to take
up the vein he must work."
During this time Roseleaf did not forget the invitation he had received
to dine with the Ferns. It did him good to see Daisy, although he could
not now get her for a moment to himself. He sighed to her over the
table, and across the parlor, after the party had retired to that part
of the house, and she answered him with little bright smiles that acted
like an emollient on his hurt spirit. He had never found the courage to
beard her father in his den--of wool--and was not even sure that the
affair had reached a stage where anything could be gained by taking such
a step. What he wanted was a word of assurance from Daisy that she would
wait for him till he had made a Name in literature, or proved his
ability in some definite manner. There was no indication that any one
else was in the way; everything pointed to a contrary probability. But
there is nothing so desolate as the heart of a lover whose fair one is
just beyond his reach.
Mr. Weil accompanied Shirley on most of these visits, and knew very well
what was going on. None of the glances exchanged between the young
people were so much their exclusive property as they believed. Had
Archie possessed eyes in the back and sides of his head, he could have
seen little more than he did. While appearing to devote his entire
attention to Mr. Fern and Millicent--principally the former, he found
time to watch Roseleaf and Daisy, and even the negro Hannibal.
He noticed that the servant was no less devoted than formerly to the
youngest member of the household. He saw him hover around her at the
table like a protecting spirit, letting her want for nothing that
thoughtfulness could procure. And he noticed that Daisy seemed as
oblivious of this as she had always been. She accepted these
extraordinary attentions quite as if Hannibal were some automaton,
acting with a set of concealed springs--a mechanism in which there was
nothing of human life or intelligence.
Mr. Fern was the same gentlemanly host as of yore, with the same dark
cloud hanging over him, whatever might be its cause. Courteous by nature
to an exceptional degree he could not assume a gayety he did not feel.
There was some terrible weight bearing him down, some awful incubus of
which he was unable to rid himself. The only person who did not notice
it was Millicent, and the one it troubled most was Daisy, on whose sweet
young face the share she had in her parent's griefs had already begun to
leave its impressions.
Millicent's novel was soon placed in Mr. Gouger's hands, completed. The
original theme was unaltered, but in its new garb of perfect English no
one would have recognized the rejected work. The combination of the
girl's strength of mind and the man's elegance of diction was
successful. The critic recommended its acceptance without a word of
dissent, and Cutt & Slashem even consented, on his suggestion, to
forego the guarantee against loss which they had of late demanded from
all authors whose names were unknown to the reading public.
"I have fixed it for you, Archie," he said, when that gentleman next
made his appearance at the sanctum. "No deposit or guarantee, and ten
per cent. of the retail price for royalty. So take a train to your
inamorata's house and tell her the news."
Mr. Weil did not seem to wholly relish the announcement.
"In the first place," he remarked, "you have no business to speak of
Miss Fern as my inamorata; and in the second you will pay her more than
ten per cent. or you won't get the book to print."
At this, Mr. Gouger, after the manner of all publishers and their
agents, proceeded to show to Mr. Weil that it was perfectly impossible
to pay another cent more than the figure he had named; and before he had
finished he agreed to see the firm and get the amount raised
considerably, provided the sales should exceed five thousand copies. In
short, Mr. Weil secured a very respectable contract for a new author,
and one that was sure to please Miss Fern, if she was in the least
degree reasonable.
"I wish you would hurry up Roseleaf," remarked Gouger, when this matter
was disposed of. "When will you take him down into the depths and let
him see that side of life?"
"I have arranged a journey for to-morrow night," said Weil. "We shall go
to Isaac Leveson's and make an evening of it. Unless things are
different there from usual, he will lay the foundation for all the
wickedness he needs to put into his story."
The critic nodded approval.
"He will probably have a Jew in it, then--a modernized Fagan."
"Yes," said Weil. "And a negro. A tall, well-built negro, who has a
white man for his slave!"