CAPE OF STORMS
A NOVEL
BY
PERCIVAL POLLARD
CHICAGO
THE ECHO
1895
"So this old mariner, Bartholomew Diaz, called that
place the cape of torments and of storms and blessed
his Maker that he was safely gone by it. And even so,
in the lives of us all, there is a Cape of Storms, the
which to pass safely is delightful fortune, and on
which to be wrecked is the common fate. For it often
happens that this Corner Dangerous holds a woman's
face." * * *
--An Unknown Author
1894
ST. JOSEPH
FRIDENAU
CHICAGO
1895
PROLOGUE
"Life is a cup that is better to sip than to drain; the taste of the
dregs is very bitter in the mouth." I shall never forget those words of
our dear minister's, I suppose, because so much that has happened since
he first uttered them to us as we sat in his Sunday-school class has
shown me the truth of them. Dick himself, I remember, was especially
loth to believe Mr. Fairly's monition; indeed, none of us young bloods
cared to think that there was anything in the life before us that was
not altogether worth living, and when Dick spoke up plainly and quite
proudly, arguing against the pastor's words, we were all silent
approvers of his challenge. Dick was always the bravest boy in the
village; and we had long since come to be admirers rather than rivals.
But Mr. Fairly only shook his head and smiled a little--he had a
wonderful smile, and his eyes were always shining with kindness--and
patted Dick on the head, with a gentle, "Well, well, my boy, let us hope
so; let us hope so. Perhaps you will be fortunate above your fellows."
The incident dwells in my memory for many reasons. It was, as I have
said, a curiously prophetic sentence of our pastor's; besides that, it
was the last Sunday that we were all together in Lincolnville, we boys
who had played, and fought and learned together. Early in the week,
Dick--somehow, long after the world has come to know him only as Richard
Lancaster, I am still unable to think of him as anything but the "Dick"
of my boyhood--was to leave the village for the world; he was going to
begin a life for himself, up there in that mysteriously magnetic
maelstrom--the town. Like Dick Whittington of old, and every fresh
young blood every day of this world's life, he was going up to town to
conquer. Before him lay the beautiful pathway into a glorious future;
promises and pleasures were like hedges to that way that he was going to
tread. He was all eagerness, all hope, all ambition. And, to be just,
perhaps there was never a boy went up to town from Lincolnville who had
better cause to be full of pleasant hopes for his future than Dick.
Certainly, it was the first time the little place had evolved such a
talent; and it felt a pardonable pride in the boy; it expected, perhaps,
even more than he did, and was looking forward to the reflected glory of
being his native village.
If you have traveled through the West at all, and have anything more
than a car-window acquaintance with the great Middle West, you know
Lincolnville fairly well, I think. Not that you may ever have been to
the village itself, but because it is a type of thousands of other
villages scattered throughout the country.
It is the county-seat, and is built upon the checker-board plan, with a
sort of hollow square in the middle, filled, as an Irishman might say,
with a park. The sides of this square form the business heart of the
place; each street that runs away from the square is lined with pretty
dwelling-houses of frame or brick, so that the village looks like an
octopus with four large tentacles stretching toward every point of the
compass. The streets are fringed with shade trees of every sort, and in
midsummer the place looks like a veritable nest of green and cool
bowers. The county is strictly and agricultural one; the farmers come to
"town," as they call it, every Saturday; at least, hitch their horses to
the iron railing that surrounds the park, and spend the day selling
produce, buying dry goods, implements or other necessaries. The face of
the village rarely changes; there is an occasional fire on the "square,"
mayhap, and then the newer building that fills the gap is in decided
improvement over the old one; young men are forever going out into the
world, and old men are for ever coming back thither to die; for the rest,
one might fancy that, if you came into the world again a hundred years
from now, you would find the same farmers doing their "trading" at
exactly the same stores that they now favor. On occasions of a political
convention, or a circus, the town takes on a festive aspect, and the
roads leading to the square are filled, all day long, with wagons that
have come from the further edges of the county. During the three or four
days of the County Fair, too, there is great activity between the
village and the Fair Grounds, and, if it be a dry summer, the air
between those places is merely one huge cloud of dust. Occasionally the
pretty little Opera House has an entertainment that draws out such of
the citizens as have no very severe religious scruples against the
theatre. For the rest, the place is an admirable home of quiet. Young
blood chafes at this quiet; old blood finds there the peace it seeks.
In the very nature of things, a place of this sort is chiefly concerned
with its own affairs; the main theme of conversation are its own people.
Everyone is perfectly acquainted with his neighbor's affairs, and not
infrequently, in fact, is able to inform that neighbor of certain
details relating to the latter, that had until then been unknown to him.
So it was that, at the time of Dick's leaving Lincolnville, the good
people of that place knew, much better than he did himself, the surety
of his engagement to Dorothy Ware. He himself would have been only too
glad to be as sure as they were, when he heard the rumors he was given
to smiling rather sardonically.
He came to me once, I remember, and looked at me for a long time with
those clear, grey eyes of his. "Tell me, old man," he said, "do you
think she cares for me?" It is a stupid question, this; but almost
every boy who is in love puts it to some friend or other, in the quest
for confirmation of his fears or hopes. "Why, Dick," I said--still more
foolishly, perhaps, now that I look back on it--"Why, Dick, of course
she does. We all do." "Oh," he flung in, impatiently, "I don't mean
that!" I knew what he meant; but who shall tell, being a man, whether a
girl cares or not? Although, if ever a boy was made to be well beloved,
surely it was Dick.
He was always a high-spirited youngster; some of his tricks are still
legends of the old high-school in his native place. He never liked to
fight, being naturally mild of temper; but when he was roused beyond
endurance lie was a veritable Daniel. His father died when he was only
four years old; to his mother he was the most devoted of sons.
It was when he was about ten years old that his talent for drawing first
proved itself. It came to him in the way that it has come to many who
have since made the world listen to their names--on the old black-board
in the schoolroom. It was a caricature of Mr. Fairly, I remember, who
was always very tall and very thin, and whose face was like that of a
French general's under the empire. Dick exaggerated all these
peculiarities most deftly with his chalk, and then it so happened that
Mr. Fairly himself walked in and found the caricature. He only looked at
Dick quietly, and put his hand down on his shoulder with a subdued, "I
am a good deal older than you, my boy, a good deal older. You're sorry,
aren't you?" And something in our minister's tone must have touched
Dick, for the boy put his head down and said: "Yes, sir," with a little
choke in his voice. Nor do I think that from that day to this Dick has
ever drawn or painted in caricature. But in all other ways he developed
his talent day by day with really wonderful results. He always had a
rare notion of color; the autumn foliage thereabouts gave him the most
startling effects. He used to go out into the woods in mid-summer and
mid-winter--it made little difference to him--and come back with some of
the prettiest bits of landscape work I have ever seen. There were, it is
true, certain palpable crudities in his work, due to the lack of any
training save that of his instincts, but those would undoubtedly
disappear as soon as he came under the influence of a proper instructor.
It was for this that he was going to leave the village and become of the
greater world in town. His mother had rebelled at first; she was growing
old, and she feared the thought of losing sight of him; but there was no
restraining his ambition. To remain cooped up in that little corral of a
place all his life--oh, no; that was not at all the thing for Dick
Lancaster. That great world, out there, that he had read and heard so
much about, that was where he ought to be; and it was there he wanted to
wager and to win; what was there left in Lincolnville? He could do
nothing more there; his life was beginning to be a mere stagnation. He
must out and away. This longing for shaking off the shackles of that
narrow village life was, as much as ambition, the spur that sent him out
into the larger world. And I do not wonder at him. Those small places
are not fit arenas for the disporting of ambitions or freedoms.
At this time, Dick was a little over one-and-twenty. He was handsome in
a dark, olive-skinned sort of way, and his eyes had the longest lashes I
have ever seen in a man. His hair curled a little, though he was forever
trying to comb and coax the curl away; he hated it, saying that curls
were all right for a girl, perhaps, but not for a man. He was, but for
the fact that he was very fond of good cigars, a veritable Pierrot. He
had always been very closely under his mother's influence; even his
association with the boys of his own age and class had not been enough
to taint him at all. He had a fancy that, now as I consider it, after
all these years, seems a most pathetic one, that the world was a very
beautiful place in which the wicked were always punished, if not by
actual stripes, at least by the disdain of their fellow-men. It seems
strange, perhaps, that a young man of his age should still hold such
notions, but you must remember that in the quieter villages of our
country it is possible to hold these fancies all one's life; the town is
the great disenchanter. Dick considered that he had two things to live
for--his ambition and Dorothy Ware.
It was beautiful, the way the boy sometimes rhapsodized; beautiful, and
yet in the light of after events, sad. "One day, you know," he said in
one of his bursts of enthusiasm, "I will be known all the world over as
a great painter. People will come to my studio and wonder at it, and the
work in it. They will invite me everywhere. I will be a lion. But I
shall always place my work first; admiration shall go into the last
place. And there will be Dorothy! Dear Dorothy! I haven't asked her yet,
you know, but I hope--oh, yes, I hope--that it will be all right between
us. Dorothy will help me in everything; when I begin to flag, or to lose
spirit, she will spur me on. She will represent me to the great world of
society when I am hard at work; she will be my veritable Alter Ego. And
some day--some day, when I feel that my brush and my hand have in them
the passion for my masterpiece, I will paint her face--her face!" He
took up a photograph that lay on the table before him and looked at it
steadily for an instant or two. "Sweet face!" he went on, "how shall
mere paint ever represent you? There must be love, too. Love and paint.
The one is a mere trick of the hand and eye; the other is mine and mine
alone. For no one can love her as I do."
As for Miss Dorothy Ware, she was eighteen and beautiful. I do not know
that any woman really needs a fuller description than that. As for her
wit, it is too early in this chronicle to speak of that; nor do I,
personally, differ much from Théophile Gautier, when he states that a
woman who has wit enough to be beautiful has all she needs.
Miss Ware's father had made a great deal of money by the very simple
process of growing old; he had been one of the pioneer settlers in that
county and his had been most of the land that the village now stood on.
Miss Ware herself, while sensible of her riches, was unspoilt by them.
By nature she was of the disposition that one can call nothing else but
"sweet;" she was tender and gracious; she was fond of fun, so long as
that fun annoyed no one else; in a word, she was considerate and gentle
and lovable. She had been brought up in the south, and she had retained
a trace of the southern accent, so that her speech was in itself a
charm; she had natural talents for looking pretty under all
circumstances; some might have said that she had the instincts of a
coquette, but I do not believe it of her. She was devoted to children
and dumb animals. And whoso has those instincts is intrinsically good.
But Miss Ware held that she had by no means had enough of this world's
pleasures to begin thinking of so solemn a thing as marriage. Like a
large number of the girls of today, she was, first and foremost, "out
for a good time," as the slang of the time has it. She had certainly the
intention of some day marrying the man she loved and making him as happy
as she could; but in the meanwhile she wanted to test the world's
ability to furnish entertainment quite a little while yet. Which was
why, although she was very fond of Dick, she had invariably put him
off, when he grew importunate, with a laugh. "Why, Dick," she would say,
"don't you know you're absurd to think of such a thing? We're just
children yet. Oh, I know we're of age, but what of that? You don't mean
to tell me that you think your life has shaped, or even begun to shape
itself yet? No. And as for me, I'm going to skirmish around a while yet
before I settle down and become old married people! Be sensible, Dick!"
And Dick, with a sigh in his heart, was, perforce, fain to say that he
would try. "Skirmish around!" It grated on him, somehow, that phrase; it
seemed to hold for him visions of innumerable flirtations; of contact
with the world, the flesh and the devil, with the brushing off of the
faint, roseate bloom of innocence.
It was on the day before Dick's departure for town that Lincolnville
received the news of another intended going abroad. The Wares' were to
sail for Europe before the month was out. Mrs. Ware had long been an
invalid; for years the doctors had advised travel, but her husband's
objections to any sort of change had hitherto prevailed against her
wishes. But now the really dangerous state of Mrs. Ware's health, added
to the entreaties of Dorothy, who longed, as do all American girls, for
a glimpse of the old country, had brought the old gentleman to
acquiescence. He would not go himself; he was getting too old for such a
trip; but his wife and daughter should go, if they had set their hearts
on it. So that, with the prospective departure of both Richard Lancaster
and the girl that rumor had him engaged to, the tongues of the gossips
had plenty to do on that day. When Dick first heard the news about the
Wares' he was inclined to be downhearted; then it struck him that it
would give him an opportunity for another effort at getting from Dorothy
at least the promise of a promise.
Than Lincolnville in mid-summer I know few fairer places; there is a
cool, green quiet all about that makes for peace and gentleness, and in
the whispering of the breeze as it curls through the thick foliage of
the spreading trees there is the note of happiness. Happiness, indeed,
lies nearer to man in one of these small, serene villages, than anywhere
else in the world, save in solitude; but it is rarely that man sees the
sleeping beauty that he has sought all his life long. Dick, as he walked
along toward the Ware house that splendid afternoon, caught something of
the warm, comfortable languor that was in the air, and looked about him
with a note of regret in his regard. "How pretty it all is!" he thought,
looking at the familiar houses, with their well-kept lawns and
ivy-covered verandahs, "how pretty! And yet--" he sighed, and then
smiled with a proud lift of the head--"there are other things!"
He found Miss Ware seated in a hammock on what was known as the
front-porch. It was a long, low, cool stretch of verandah, reminding one
of the style of architecture in vogue in the old south. It was all
harbored in vines that were so luxurious they hardly gave the breeze a
fair chance to penetrate; on the other hand, the sun's rays were safely
guarded against.
Young Lancaster drew up a chair, after she had smiled and reached him
one of her hands. He looked at her critically for a moment.
"Dorothy," he said, "I have never seen you looking so pretty."
"I have never felt so happy, Dick," she said.
"Because you are going away?"
"Yes. And you?"
"I am happy, too. And yet, I am rather sorry. I have lived here all my
life; this is the first time that I am going away from home. There is
something solemn about it; but then--the end, oh, the end--justifies it
all. That is not the chief reason why I am not altogether satisfied to
go away. Dorothy, don't you know the other reason?"
She opened her eyes a little, and smiled a trifle at the corners of her
mouth. "I, Dick, why, how should I know?" Then she saw that he looked
hurt and she changed her tone. "Dick," she went on, "why won't you be
sensible about it? I suppose you mean about me? Why, Dick, you know I
like you, don't you? I've always liked you and admired you, but--dear
me, can I help it if I feel sure that I don't like anyone yet--in that
way? I'd like to, perhaps, but--well, I don't. What can I do?" She
looked at him appealingly and reproachfully.
"I know, I know," he said, soothingly, "I'm an impetuous, thoughtless
idiot, I'm afraid, and I hurt you. And, oh, Dorothy! don't you know I'd
rather suffer torments unspeakable than hurt you?" He put out his hand
and touched the one hand of hers that swung beside him, over the edge of
the hammock. "But yet, dear," he went on, "if I only had a word from you
to remember, be it ever so slight, I would fight so much better against
the world. For it is the same to-day as it was in the middle ages; we go
to our crusades, all of us, and if we have a sweetheart who will give us
her love as an armor, we fight the better fight. Our crusades have a
different air, to be sure, but the idea is the same. Don't you know,
Dorothy, that if you only gave, me some little thing to cling to, I
would feel a hundred times stronger. Come, Dorothy, it costs you little
to say it!"
"But if I say that word, I must live up to it."
"True; your fair conscience would let you do nothing less. And yet,
there are words so slight that they would cost you scarcely anything,
while to me they would be coats of mail."
For a time there was silence, both looking out over the street where the
school children were passing homewards. A buggy rattled by, throwing
clouds of dust; then there was quiet again. "If you could say to me,
Dorothy, 'Dick, I won't marry anyone until I see you again, until I
come home again. And I'll try to like you--that way,' why, that would be
enough for me."
She held up her right hand with a pretty little gesture. "I do solemnly
swear," she said. Then she went on more seriously, "Why, yes, Dick, I'll
promise that. Small chance of my getting married for a few years,
anyway, so I won't have such a very awful time living up to that
promise. Now, do you think, sir, that you're engaged to me?"
"No, no, dear; not at all. But you've let me hope, haven't you? That's
all I want. You don't know how much happier I'll feel all the time
you're away. How long, by the way, do you think you'll be abroad?"
"A year, at the least. I want to see it all, you know, when I do get the
chance. Mamma'll want to stay in Carlsbad or Ems, or somewhere all the
time; but I'm going to get her well real soon, you see if I don't, and
then we'll just travel for fun and nothing else. Dick, wouldn't it be
great if you could go along?"
"It would, for a fact," he assented, "but it's too good to be true.
Besides I'm going to have some fun of my own!"
"Your work, you mean?"
"Yes. Isn't it fun to succeed? And I'm going to succeed! The fighting
for success will be fun, and the victory will be fun!" His eyes flashed
with a fierce battle-light. Today this fire of ambition is the only
thing that at all takes the place of the blood fervor that spurred on
the knights of the olden times. "Dorothy," he said, presently, with a
sudden softness in his voice, "will you wish me luck?"
She gave him, for answer, her right hand, and looked at him wistfully.
She was wondering, perhaps, why it was that she did not love this
lovable boy. "I wish you all the success in the world," she said
quietly. And then, as he turned to go, she called after him, in the old
formula they had used to each other a thousand times as boy and
girl--"Good-bye, Dick. Be good!"
The love affairs of a boy and a girl, you may think, are hardly the
things that matter very much in the world of today. But the boy and girl
of today are the man and the woman of tomorrow; and between these stages
there is only the little gulf, so easily crossed, wherein runs the river
of knowledge of the world we live in. As soon as we have crossed that we
are become men and women, and are left of our childhood nothing but the
wish that it were ours again.
CHAPTER I
Although the western windows were open, it was decidedly warm in the
offices of the _Weekly Torch_. The offices were on the tenth floor in
one of the town's best known sky-scrapers--the Aurora. There was a view,
through the windows, of innumerable roofs and streets; here and there
the tower of a railway station or a new hotel protruded--in the words
of A.B. Wooton owner of the _Torch_--"like a sore thumb." Mr. Wooton was
at that moment engaged in the diverting pastime of having his feet
stretched over the side of his desk; and watching the smoke of his
cigarette curl out of the window. Besides his own, there were three
other desks, of the roller-top pattern, in the room, the door of which
was marked "Editorial Rooms," but was rarely, if ever, seen closed. As a
usual thing the outer door to the corridor was, in the summer-time at
least, also left wide open; you could see from the window clear to the
outer door. Indeed, it was one of Wooten's special talents, this ability
of his to see at a glance, from his seat by the window, who it was that
was coming in through the farther door. At one of the other desks a man
was smoking a pipe and shoving a pencil rapidly over sheet of paper.
Presently this man laid his pencil down, took his pipe out of his mouth
and knocked the ashes over into the cuspidor. Then he leaned back in his
chair and inquired,
"Who was it?"
"Young fellow from the Art Institute," said Wooten. "Sketches to show;
wants to do illustrating; same old gag. They all come to it. Paint and
fame come altogether too high, and a fellow's got to live. Although, as
the Frenchman remarked, '_Je ne vois pahs la nécessité_.'" The ability to
hideously mispronounce French with a sort of bravado that almost made it
seem correct was one of Wooten's peculiarities.
The other man gave a mock shudder. "If your morals," he said, "were as
bad as your French, you wouldn't be fit to print. Was his stuff any
good?"
"Very fair. Got a thing or two to learn about working for reproduction,
as all these art-school men have; but he's got it in him. I told him to
go and see young Belden, on the _Chronicle_, to get a few points about
reproduction. I believe I'll be able to use him. If he's cheap." Wooton
laughed, and threw the stub of his cigarette out of the window. Then he
began throwing the papers on his desk all in a heap and looking into,
under and around them. "Confound the luck," he began; then, turning to
the other man, "Got a cigarette, Van?"
Van, whose full name was Vanstruther, and whom his intimates called
alternately "Tom" and "Van," threw a box over to the other's desk,
laughing. "I swear," he said, "it's my firm belief that if a man were to
put you in a story and try to draw you with a single stroke he would
only have to say that you spent your life between buying and losing
cigarettes."
"And matches," added the other calmly. "Got one?"
"Jupiter! If this thing goes on I'm going to strike for higher rates.
It's not in the contract that I furnish the office with smokes!"
"No. But the stuff you write, Van, is what drives me to cigarettes. So
you make your own bed, you see. Hallo! Here's alone female to see me!
Wonder who?"
He got up and went towards the door. "Did you wish to see me?" he
inquired.
"The editor?" She hesitated a little but he assured her with a slight
nod that she had found her man, and she followed him towards his desk.
She took a seat beside him, and they began conversing in a tone so low
that Vanstruther could only catch a stray word now and again. Presently
she got up. "Very well then," she was saying, "you have my address; if
anything should turn up, you will let me know, won't you?" With a little
rustling of skirts she was gone. Presently they could here her voice
saying "Down!" to the elevator boy.
"What was her game?" asked Vanstruther.
"Wanted to contribute poetry as a regular department. You can't fling a
club around a corner anywhere in this town without hitting one of her
kind, nowadays!"
"Then why didn't you tell her right away you weren't using anything of
that sort?"
"Why, you infernal idiot, didn't you look at her?"
"No. Choice?"
"Very." He put a slip of paper into a pigeon hole, remarking as he did
so, "Filed for future reference."
From the next room came a gruff voice, "Column of editorial to fill yet,
Mr. Wooton."
"That foreman of mine's like Banquo's ghost," muttered Wooton, as he
put his pen into the ink and bent down over the desk. For a while there
was only the sound of pen and pencil going over paper, and the click of
the type in the next room. Then there was a heavy step heard in the
passage outside, and presently Wooton muttered: "The Lord's giving us
this day our daily loafers, I see. I wonder why it is," he went on
aloud, as a tall, heavy-set man, with a military mustache and eyeglasses
in front of mild blue eyes, came into the room, "that you fellows always
show up on Friday. Which, being the day we go to press--what's that?
More copy? Oh, all right!" The foreman was taking all the written sheets
from his desk and pleading for more. The new comer was evidently used to
this sort of greeting; he calmly picked a cigarette from the box on
Vanstruther's desk, lit it and sat down on a chair that was drawn up to
the table-where the "exchanges" lay piled in heaps. He finally found
what he had been apparently looking for--a paper with a very gaudy and
risky picture on the front of the cover; he folded it to his
satisfaction and began to look through it. "Say, Van," he began,
presently, "what's this I hear about their going to play the
Ober-Ammergau Passion Play here? Anything in it?"
Vanstruther was terribly busy. "Haven't heard," was all he said.
"I heard that it was all fixed," the other went on. "They've even got
the man to play the leading part. Fellow called Tom Vanstruther. They
say he's going to play the part without a makeup, and--"
"Oh, look here," said Vanstruther, half turning around in his chair,
"you go to the devil, will you?"
The other man took out a huge cigar-holder, inserted his cigarette and
curled his mustache. "Van's still a little sore about that," he said,
turning to Wooton, who merely nodded his head. There came again the
sound of footsteps in the outer hall, and Wooton, peering forward a
little, broke into a cheery "Hallo, Dante Gabriel Belden, glad to see
you! Come in. By the way, I just sent a young fellow who has your
disease over to see you this morning. Wants to learn the reproduction
rules of the game. See him?"
"Yes. Had a little talk with him. Clever chap. Tell you about him in a
minute. Hallo, Van, how are the other three hundred and ninety-nine?
Hallo, Stanley, haven't they got you under the vagrancy ordinance yet?"
The man with the huge mustache and the lengthy cigar-holder shook his
head and said, "Not yet. But I understand they're on the trail. Well,
how is Art, and what are the books you have lately bought, and what is
the latest of your schemes that has died?"
"Oh, give them to me one at a time. Hang it, Wooton, why do you allow
this man to come up here, anyway, to wear out your furniture and the
patience of us all?"
"Oh," said Wooton, "he's an amusing animal, and I forgive any man
anything if only he will amuse me."
"That's beastly bad morals!" said the artist.
"Morals!" echoed Wooton, with a bland smile, "my dear boy, you want to
take a pill. No; take two! Morals in this day and age; moreover, on the
borders of Bohemia, to talk about morals! Jove, I see myself forced to
seek the solace of the deadly cigarette." He lit one of those slender
rolls of tobacco and paper and went on, "However you haven't answered
Stanley's questions yet. For you must know, Van, that Belden is one of
the most extravagant and insatiable hunters of art books in all this
town. Ever been in his flat? Well, it's a series of rooms, completely
lined with books and pictures, with a very small hole in the middle of
each room. Said hole being usually filled--to use an Irishism--with a
center-table loaded to the guards with art portfolios. I don't believe
there's a book or art store in town that the man doesn't owe large bills
to; and I know, for a fact, that when it comes to be a question between
a new overcoat and a new art book, he always takes the latter. And as
for his schemes--well, I will admit they're all good, but, like the
good, they die young. While they have the merit of exceeding novelty,
they ride him like the plague; but presently a new idol comes and the
old one falls into decay. Tell us, Dante, about the newest scheme!"
"H'm," replied the artist, "I don't see that you've left me anything to
tell. I've got a new book of Vierge's stuff that you fellows want to
come up and see one of these days; that's about all that I can think
of."
"Thank you for the pressing invitation," said Wooton.
"Oh, and about that fellow you sent up to see me," Belden continued, "I
liked his stuff immensely. He needs a little experience and hard luck on
the practical side of getting his stuff made into cuts, and he'll be all
right. The fact is, Wooton, seeing you like the fellow's sketches fairly
well, and I'm rushed to death with other work, I've thought of turning
my work for the Torch over to him. Would you object?"
"Not a bit, provided he does it as well; and he won't have to get much
of a move on to do that. And then they're cheaper when they're green!"
Belden groaned. "You're the most awful specimen of materialism I ever
hope to run up against. Then you don't object to this fellow--what's his
name again, Lancaster, isn't it?--doing your sketches? All right, I'll
train him a bit for you. And then I guess it would be a good scheme for
him to have a desk here in your office somewhere, so that he can have a
workshop and be right at hand for you. It isn't as if he had a studio of
his own."
"That'll be all right; we've got plenty of room. But while you're
training him, old man, I hope you won't inoculate him with that
villainous style of dressing you adopt at the end of your pen. You're
very hot people on everything that's got to be done in a hurry, and
you're great on fine work of the etching order, but when it comes to
making people look like the men and women one would care to be seen
with, you're simply not in this county, that's all there is about it.
I've always claimed, you know," he went on, turning a little so that he
faced Vanstruther and Stanley, "that the great fault common to all the
black-and-white artists in this town was that they couldn't define the
difference between a gentleman and a hoodlum. They talk to me about
technique, and drawing, and all the rest of it, none of which, I will
admit, I know a mortal thing about; but all I answer is that I'm going
from the point of view of the man who doesn't know how the drawing is
made, but who does know how it looks when it's finished. The people of
today look at nearly everything for it's merely superficial aspect; and
the finer people look to our artists to display taste in clothing their
pictorial creatures. If you only dress your people well, they'll want
your drawings so that they can get fashion pointers from them.
Now-a-days an illustrator has got to be more than a mere manipulator of
pen and ink; he has got to keep an eye on the fashions, and even a
little ahead of them. At least, that's what the man I'm looking for
should be."
Stanley muttered, around the edges of his mustache, so that only
Vanstruther could hear, "Yes; and he'd want to pay him as much as ten
dollars a week!"
Belden laughed, and got up. "Why don't you put all that into a lecture,
Wooton, and give the fellows over at the Institute a glimpse of this
higher knowledge of yours. However, I've got to be going. I'll send that
man Lancaster over here in a day or so. Goodbye, people!"
"There's one of the cleverest fellows with a pen in this town," said
Wooten, as soon as the artist's footsteps had died away down the
corridor, "but he's utterly spoiled himself by the work he's been doing
of late years. He's a very fast worker, and one of the best men a daily
paper ever got hold of. Then, too, I've seen copy-work of his--that is,
from photographs or paintings--done in pen-and-ink, that had all the
fine detail and effect of an etching. But, for the sake of the money
there is in it, he does blood and thunder illustrations for a paper of
that sort. After a man has done that sort of thing for a year or two, it
gets into his style. I don't believe he'll ever be able to do anything
else, now. Of course, he'll aways make good money, because his speed and
capacity for work are simply invaluable; but art, as far as he is
concerned, must be weeping large salty tears."
"This picture of you, A.B. Wooton, pleading the cause of art," remarked
Stanley, "is one of the most affecting I have ever beheld. It really
makes me feel--hungry."
"Your invitation, sir," said Wooton, walking over toward the closet and
getting his hat, "is cordially accepted. Come on, Van; we are invited to
lunch by the Honorable Mr. Stanley, exchange reader to the _Torch_.
Never linger in a case like this!"
"For consummate nerve," Stanley suggested, "you really take the medal,
A.B. However, seeing I made a little borrow from the old lady yesterday,
I will go you one lunch on the strength of it. But I do hope you men had
late breakfasts."
Just before they were ready to pass out, Tony, the office boy came in.
"Say," he said to Wooton, in a low tone, "you remember that letter I
took to the house day before yesterday? Well, does the quarter walk
to-day?"
"Which," Wooton explained, as he handed the boy a quarter, "is Tony's
peculiar way of inquiring whether he is going to get that twenty-five
cents or not." Tony grinned and went back to his desk were he was busy
addressing wrappers.
When the three men came back from lunch, they found a young man, holding
a black leather case in his hand, such as bank messengers carry, sitting
patiently in a chair in the outer office. He got up when they entered,
and handed Wooton a paper. Wooton took it to the light, read it slowly,
and handed it back. "Tell him to send that around again on the tenth,
will you." Then he walked into the composing room and began talking to
the foreman. The collector put the slip of paper back into his portfolio
and went out.
"Van," said Wooton, as they sat down at his desk, presently, "I wish
you'd try and hurry that stuff of yours along a little, will you? I've
got to go to a tea at Mrs. Stewart's at four, and the ghost tells me
that your page is half a column shy yet."
Vanstruther nodded silently, while Stanley inquired, "Excuse my
ignorance Mr. Wooten, but who is Mrs. Stewart?"
"What? You don't know the great and only Annie McCallum Stewart? Oh,
misericordia, can such things be?"
"They are."
"Well, Mrs. Stewart is a remarkably clever woman. One of the cleverest
women our society affords, in fact. She is the daughter of one of the
town's best known and most popular doctors, and everyone in society knew
her so well when she was only Annie McCallum that now, when she is
married to Stewart, one still uses her old name as well as her new one.
That's all the result of individuality. She has read a great deal, and
kept her eyes open a great deal. She has a husband who is ridiculously
fond of her, and otherwise as blind as a bat. She, on the other hand,
has a mania for young men. Whenever you see her with a young man of any
sort of looks, somebody will tell you that Annie McCallum Stewart has
got a new youth in the net. She likes to lure them up into her 'den,' as
she calls it, and talk to them about the higher life. Then they fall in
love with her and she forgives them and elaborates upon the beauties of
pure Platonism. In a word, Stanley, she's one of the most perfect forms
of the mental flirt I ever come across."
"H'm. Is your tea today to be in duet form, or is it a general
scramble?"
"Oh, it's a general all-comers' game. But I always like to go to that
house; she interests me immensely. I'm always wondering how near she
really can skate to the edge without breaking over."
"Yes," acquiesced the other, reflectively, "that is an interesting
speculation. Hallo, here's another friend of yours!"
The new-comer laid an envelope on Wooton's desk and waited. The latter
opened it hastily, and then said, "I sent that down by this morning's
mail."
The man had hardly gone before Stanley laid down the paper he had been
paging through and said, looking steadily at Wooton, "Jupiter, but you
do that easily! If I could do that only half as well I'd count myself as
free from debts for the rest of my life. It's my solemn belief that you
can tell a collector from an ordinary mortal as soon as he steps inside
the door. I've heard you tell a man, who had only just turned inside the
outer office, that you were 'going to send that down in the morning,'
and I've seen you look the enemy calmly in the face and tell him that
you had fixed that up with his employer about an hour ago. And you do it
as easily as if you were lighting a cigarette. Another man might get
embarrassed, and hesitate, or feel guilty! But you! Not in a hundred
years! You never quail worth a cent. It's positive genius, my boy,
positive genius!"
"No; it's only business, that's all."
"H'm, by the way, speaking of business, aren't you running the game a
trifle extravagantly here? I don't want to mix in, of course, but is the
thing paying so well as--"
The other interrupted him. "My dear fellow," he said, "it's evident you
haven't any idea how well this thing is paying. Why, man, look at me! Do
I economise much? No. Well, I don't have to, that's why! But come on and
let's saunter down street. Van's finished, and they've got all the copy
they want, and I expect there are a few pretty girls out today. Let's go
and take a glimpse at the parade on the Avenue. And then I'll go down to
that tea."
There were several callers at the office after they had left; some
bill-collectors, a society man who left the announcement for some
forthcoming dances; a boy to buy ten copies of last week's paper; a
printer looking for work; and the mail-carrier. Towards six o'clock the
foreman and the compositors left; then Tony, the office-boy, shut up his
desk, and went out, locking the door behind him. The Weekly Torch had
gone to rest for the day.