"To the citizens and all the realm I make this proclamation: for now
have I moored my bark of life, and so will own myself a happy man.
Many are the shapes that fortune takes, and oft the gods bring things
to pass beyond our expectation. That which we deemed so sure is not
fulfilled, while for that we never thought would be, Heaven finds out
a way. And such hath been the issue in the present case."
_The Author of The Eagle's Shadow_
§ 94
"Would you advise me, sir," he was asking, "to become a regular
writer--now?"
For I had got just this far, and, as I have said, the clock behind me
was just striking midnight, when I was interrupted by an unlooked-for
visitor.
Most writers, for their sins, are used to the incursions of the
literarily-inclined young man (with, as a rule, quite dreadful
manuscripts hidden about his person) who wants advice as to his
life-work. But that this especial young man should be calling upon me
for that purpose, or for any other purpose, did, I confess, even on
Walburga's Eve, astonish me....
For he undeniably sat there. He was fat, remarkably fat for a lad of
twenty-two or thereabouts; and he had, as I noticed first of all,
most enviably thick hair, sleeked down, and parted "on the side" with
some fanfaronade in the way of capillary flourishes. He was rather
curiously dressed, too, I considered: the lapels of his coat were so
small and stiff; they were held in place, I deduced, by a coat-spring,
which would be to-day, I could have no doubt, the only coat-spring
in existence. And he wore a fawn-colored waistcoat, and his rigorous
collar towered, incredible in height, above a sky-blue "Ascot tie,"
which was resplendently secured with a largish sword-hilt asparkle
everywhere with diamonds. And to describe the majestic rotundities
of this boy's shoulders as due to "padding" would be through
understatement to deceive you; since these coat-shoulders could have
been designed and builded (I reflected), by no imaginable tailor, but
only by an upholsterer.... It must have been, in fine, a good twenty
years since I had seen anybody appareled quite as he was....
"You see, I have just sold three stories to magazines," he continued,
"and I was wondering, sir, if you would advise me to become a regular
writer now."
To that I gave my customary, sage and carefully considered reply. "Of
course," I informed him, "there is a great deal to be said upon both
sides."
"I wrote five, you see: and I mailed them all out together. And The
Smart Set took one; and The Argosy took the one I sent them, too; and
Mr. Alden wrote me a real nice letter about the one I sent Harper's,
and said they would be very glad to use it if I would let them say
'paunch' where I had written 'belly'--"
"Dear me! and so you are already writing with offensive coarseness. But
don't mind me. Go on."
"Well, but I was just going to say, and that's all right, of course,
though you do sort of think of Falstaff as having one. But the other
two came back, although I can't see why, when you look at the stuff
those very magazines--!"
"You will see, by and by," I assured him: "and then you will wonder
about the stories that did not come back."
"Anyhow, I got a hundred and five dollars for the lot of them. Yes,
sir, not a cent less. And to have three out of five stick, the very
first time, is pretty unusual, don't you think?"
To that I assented. "It is the bait in the trap, it is the stroke of
doom, it is the tasted pomegranate of Persephone."
"Then I have the notion for a book, too. It's about a young man who is
in love with a girl--"
"That now is a good idea. It is an idea that has possibilities."
"--Only, he can't ask her to marry him, because she has lots of money,
and he is poor. Of course, though, it all comes out all right in the
end. His uncle left another will, you see."
"Now was that will, by any chance," I wondered, "discovered long years
afterward, in the secret drawer of an old desk? and did it transform
your high-minded but impoverished hero into a multi-millionaire?"