Ray put his manuscript back into its covering, and took it under his
arm. He meant to make a thorough trial of the publishers, and not to be
discouraged by his failures as long as a publisher was left untried. He
knew from his experience with the magazine editors that it would be a
slow affair, and he must have patience. Some of the publishers, even if
they did not look at his story, would keep it for days or weeks with the
intention or the appearance of reading it, and if they did read it they
would of course want time for it. He expected this, and he calculated
that it might very well take his manuscript six months to go the rounds
of all the houses in New York. Yet he meant, if he could, to get it
through sooner, and he was going to use his journalistic connection to
make interest for it. He would have given everything but honor to have
it known that he had written some things for _Harper’s_ and the
_Century_; he did not wish, or he said to himself and stood to it that
he did not wish, any favor shown his novel because he had written those
things. At the same time he was willing the fact that he was the
correspondent of the Midland _Echo_ should help him to a prompt
examination of his manuscript if it could; and he meant to let it be
known that he was a journalist before he let it be known that he was an
author.
He formulated some phrases introducing himself in his newspaper
character, as he walked up Broadway with his manuscript held tight under
his arm, and with that lifting and glowing of the heart which a young
man cannot help feeling if he walks up Broadway on a bright October
morning. The sun was gay on the senseless facades of the edifices,
littered with signs of the traffic within, and hung with effigies and
emblems of every conceit and color, from the cornice to the threshold,
where the show-cases crowded the passengers toward the curbstones, and
to the cellarways that overflowed the sidewalks with their wares. The
frantic struggle and jumble of these appeals to curiosity and interest
jarred themselves to an effect of kaleidoscopic harmony, just as the
multitudinous noises of the hoofs and wheels and feet and tongues broke
and bruised themselves to one roar on the ear; and the adventurer among
them found no offence in their confusion. He had his stake, too, in the
tremendous game that all were playing, some fair and some foul, and
shrieking out their bets in these strident notes; and he believed so
much he should win that he was ready to take the chances of losing. From
the stainless blue sky overhead the morning sun glared down on the
thronged and noisy street, and brought out all its details with keen
distinctness; but Ray did not feel its anarchy. The irregularity of the
buildings, high and low, as if they were parts of a wall wantonly
hacked and notched, here more and here less, was of the same moral
effect to him as the beautiful spire of Grace Church thrilling
heavenward like a hymn.
He went along, wondering if he should happen to meet either of those
young women whom he had befriended the evening before. He had heard that
you were sure to meet somebody you knew whenever you stepped out on
Broadway, and he figured meeting them, in fancy. He had decided to put
them into his story of New York life, and he tried to imagine the
character he should assign them, or rather one of them; the one who had
given the old darkey a quarter out of his dollar. He did not quite know
what to do with the child; something could be made of the child if it
were older, but a mere baby like that would be difficult to manage in
such a story as Ray meant to write. He wondered if it would do to have
her deserted by her husband, and have the hero, a young literary
adventurer, not at all like himself, fall in love with her, and then
have them both die when the husband, a worthless, drunken brute, came
back in time to prevent their marriage. Such a scheme would give scope
for great suffering; Ray imagined a scene of renunciation between the
lovers, who refused each other even a last kiss; and he felt a lump rise
in his throat. It could be made very powerful.
He evolved a character of reckless generosity for her from her
beneficence to the old negro in the ferry-boat. Under that still, almost
cold exterior, he made her conceal a nature of passionate impulse,
because the story required a nature of that sort. He did not know
whether to have the husband finally die, and the lovers marry, or
whether to have the lovers killed in an accident. It would be more
powerful to have them killed; it would be so conventional and expected
to have them happily married; but he knew the reader liked a novel that
ended well. It would be at once powerful and popular to have them elope
together. Perhaps the best thing he could do would be to have them
elope; there was a fascination in the guilty thought; he could make such
a _dénoument_ very attractive; but upon the whole he felt that he must
not, for very much the same reason that he must not himself run off with
his neighbor’s wife.
All the time that this went on in his mind, Ray was walking up Broadway,
and holding fast to the novel under his arm, which the novel in his
brain was eclipsing. His inner eye was fixed on the remembered face of
that strange girl, or woman, whom he was fashioning into a fictitious
heroine, but his outward vision roved over the women faces it
encountered, and his taste made its swift selection among them, and his
ambidextrous fancy wove romances around such, as he found pretty or
interesting enough to give his heart to. They were mostly the silly or
sordid faces that women wear when they are shopping, and they expressed
such emotions as are roused by the chase of a certain shade of ribbon,
or the hope of getting something rich and fashionable for less than its
worth. But youth is not nice, or else its eyes are keener than those of
after-life; and Ray found many beautiful and stylish girls where the
middle-aged witness would have seen a long procession of average
second-rate young women. He admired their New-Yorky dash; he saw their
difference in look and carriage from the Midland girls; and he wondered
what they would be like, if he knew them. He reflected that he did not
know any one in New York; but he expected soon to be acquainted. If he
got his novel taken he would very soon be known, and then his
acquaintance would be sought. He saw himself launched upon a brilliant
social career, and he suddenly had a difficulty presented to him which
he had not foreseen a moment before; he had to choose between a
brilliant marriage with a rich and well-born girl and fealty to the
weird heroine of his story. The unexpected contingency suggested a new
ending to his original story. The husband could die and the lovers be
about to marry, when they could become aware that the rich girl was in
love with the hero. They could renounce each other, and the hero could
marry the rich girl; and shortly after the heroine could die. An ending
like that could be made very powerful; and it would be popular, too.
Ray found himself in a jam of people who had begun suddenly to gather at
the corner he was approaching. They were looking across at something on
the other corner, and Ray looked too. Trunks and travelling-bags had
overflowed from a store in the basement there, and piled themselves on
the sidewalk and up the house wall; and against the background they
formed stood two figures. One was a decent-looking young man in a Derby
hat, and wearing spectacles, which gave him a sort of scholarly air; he
remained passive in the grip of another, probably the shopman, who was
quite colorless with excitement, and who clung fast to the shoulder of
the first, as if his prisoner were making violent efforts to escape. A
tall young policeman parted the crowd, and listened a moment to the
complaint the shopman made, with many gestures toward his wares. Then he
turned to the passive captive, and Ray heard the click of the handcuffs
as they snapped on the wrists of this scholarly-looking man; and the
policeman took him by the arm and led him away.
The intrusion of such a brutal fact of life into the tragic atmosphere
of his revery made the young poet a little sick, but the young
journalist avidly seized upon it. The poet would not have dreamed of
using such an incident, but the journalist saw how well it would work
into the scheme of that first letter he was writing home to the _Echo_,
where he treated of the surface contrasts of life in New York as they
present themselves to the stranger. A glad astonishment at the profusion
of the material for his letters possessed him; at this rate he should
have no trouble in writing them; he could make them an indispensable
feature; they would be quoted and copied, and he could get a rise out of
Hanks Brothers on the price.
He crossed to the next corner, where the shopman was the centre of a
lessening number of spectators, and found him willing to prolong the
interest he had created in the public mind. He said the thief had priced
a number of bags in the place below, and on coming up had made a grab at
one and tried to get off with it; but he was onto him like lightning. He
showed Ray which bag it was, and turned it round and upside down as if
with a fresh sense of its moral value. He said he should have to take
that bag into court, and he set it aside so that he should not forget
it.
“I suppose,” said a tall, elderly gentleman, who seemed to have been
listening to Ray’s dialogue with the shopman, “you wouldn’t be willing
to sell me that bag?” He spoke slowly with a thick, mellow voice, deep
in his throat.
“Money wouldn’t buy that bag; no sir,” said the shopman; but he seemed
uneasy.
“You know,” urged the soft-voiced stranger, “you could show some other
bag in court that was just like it.”
“I couldn’t swear to no other bag,” said the shopman, daunted, and
visibly relenting.
“That is true,” said the stranger. “But you could swear that it was
exactly like this. Still, I dare say you’re quite right, and it’s better
to produce the _corpus delicti_, if possible.”
He glanced at Ray with a whimsical demand for sympathy; Ray smiled, and
they walked off together, leaving the shopman in dubious study of his
eventful bag. He was opening it, and scrutinizing the inside.