He rose, after a late nap following his night-long vigils, with despair
in his soul. He believed it was despair, and so it was to all intents
and purposes. But, when he had bathed, he seemed to have washed a little
of his despair away; when he had dressed, he felt hungry, and he ate his
breakfast with rather more than his usual appetite.
The reaction was merely physical, and his gloom settled round him again
when he went back to his attic and saw his manuscript and those deadly
opinions. He had not the heart to go out anywhere, and he cowered alone
in his room. If he could only get the light of some other mind on the
facts he might grapple with them; but without this he was limp and
helpless. Now he knew, in spite of all his pretences to the contrary, in
spite of the warnings and cautions he had given himself, that he had not
only hoped, but had expected, that his story would be found good enough
to publish. Yet none of these readers--even those who found some
meritorious traits in it--had apparently dreamed of recommending it for
publication. It was no wonder that Miss Hughes had been so unwilling to
tell him what she thought of it; that she had urged him so strongly to
read the opinions first. What a fool she must have thought him!
There was no one else he could appeal to, unless it was old Kane. He did
not know where Kane lived, even if he could have gathered the courage to
go to him in his extremity; and he bet himself that Kane would not
repeat his last Sunday’s visit. The time for any reasonable hope of
losing passed, and then to his great joy he lost. There came a
hesitating step outside his door, as if some one were in doubt where to
knock, and then a tap at it.
Ray flung it open, and at sight of Kane the tears came into his eyes,
and he could not speak.
“Why, my dear friend!” cried Kane, “what is the matter?”
Ray kept silent till he could say coldly, “Nothing. It’s all over.”
Kane stepped into the room, and took off his hat. “If you haven’t been
rejected by the object of your affections, you have had the manuscript
of your novel declined. These are the only things that really bring
annihilation. I think the second is worse. A man is never so absolutely
and solely in love with one woman but he knows some other who is
potentially lovable; that is the wise provision of Nature. But while a
man has a manuscript at a publisher’s, it is the only manuscript in the
world. You can readily work out the comparison. I hope you have merely
been disappointed in love, my dear boy.”
Ray smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid it’s worse.”
“Then Chapley & Co. have declined your novel definitely?”
“Not in set terms; or not yet. But their readers have all reported
against it, and I’ve passed the night in reading their opinions. I’ve
got them by heart. Would you like to hear me repeat them?” he demanded,
with a fierce self-scorn.
Kane looked at him compassionately. “Heaven forbid! I could repeat them,
I dare say, as accurately as you; the opinions of readers do not vary
much, and I have had many novels declined.”
“Have you?” Ray faltered with compunction for his arrogation of all such
suffering to himself.
“Yes. That was one reason why I began to write _Hard Sayings_. But if
you will let me offer you another leaf from my experience, I will
suggest that there are many chances for reprieve and even pardon after
the readers have condemned your novel. I once had a novel accepted--the
only novel I ever had accepted--after all the publisher’s readers had
pronounced against it.”
“Had you?” Ray came tremulously back at him.
“Yes,” sighed Kane. “That is why Chapley is so fond of me; he has
forgiven me a deadly injury.” He paused to let his words carry Ray down
again, and then he asked, with a nod toward the bed where the young
fellow had flung his manuscript and the readers’ opinions, “Might I?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Ray from his depths; and Kane took up the opinions
and began to run them over.
“Yes, they have a strangely familiar effect; they are like echoes from
my own past.” He laid them down again. “Do you think they are right?”
“Yes. Perfectly! That is”--
“Oh! _That is._ There is hope, I see.”
“How, hope?” Ray retorted. “Does my differing with them make any
difference as to the outcome?”
“For the book, no, perhaps; for you, yes, decidedly. It makes all the
difference between being stunned and being killed. It is not pleasant to
be stunned, but it is not for such a long time as being killed. What is
your story about?”
It astonished Ray himself to find how much this question revived his
faith and courage. His undying interest in the thing, by and for itself,
as indestructible as a mother’s love, revived, and he gave Kane the
outline of his novel. Then he filled this in, and he did not stop till
he had read some of the best passages. He suddenly tossed his manuscript
from him. “What a fool I am!”
Kane gave his soft, thick laugh, shutting his eyes, and showing his
small white teeth, still beautifully sound. “Oh, no! Oh, no! I have read
worse things than that! I have written worse than that. Come, come! Here
is nothing to beat the breast for. I doubt if Chapley’s will take it, in
defiance of their readers; their experience with me has rendered that
very improbable. But they are not the only publishers in New York, or
Philadelphia even; I’m told they have very eager ones in Chicago. Why
shouldn’t the _roman psychologique_, if that’s the next thing, as Mr.
Brandreth believes, get on its legs at Chicago, and walk East?”
“I wonder,” Ray said, rising aimlessly from his chair, “whether it would
do to call on Mr. Brandreth to-day? This suspense--Do you know whether
he is very religious?”
“How should I know such a thing of my fellow-man in New York? I don’t
know it even of myself. At times I am very religious, and at times, not.
But Mr. Brandreth is rather a formal little man, and a business
interview on Sunday, with an agonized author, might not seem exactly
decorous to him.”
“I got the impression he wasn’t very stiff. But it wouldn’t do,” said
Ray, before Kane had rounded his neat period. “What an ass I am!”
“We are all asses,” Kane sighed. “It is the great bond of human
brotherhood. When did you get these verdicts?”
“Oh, Mr. Brandreth told me Miss Hughes had taken them home with her
yesterday, and I couldn’t rest till I had his leave to go and get them
of her.”
“Exactly. If we know there is possible unhappiness in store for us, we
don’t wait for it; we make haste and look it up, and embrace it. And how
did my dear old friend Hughes, if you saw him, impress you this time?”
“I saw him, and I still prefer him to _his_ friends,” said Ray.
“Naturally. There are not many people, even in a planet so overpeopled
as this, who are the peers of David Hughes. He goes far to make me
respect my species. Of course he is ridiculous. A man so hopeful as
Hughes is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the human proposition. How can
there reasonably be hope in a world where poverty and death are? To be
sure, Hughes proposes to eliminate poverty and explain death. You know
he thinks--he really believes, I suppose--that if he could once get his
millenium going, and everybody so blessed in this life that the absolute
knowledge of heavenly conditions in another would not tempt us to
suicide, then the terror and the mystery of death would be taken away,
and the race would be trusted with its benificent meaning. It’s rather a
pretty notion.”
Ray, with his narrow experience, would not have been able to grasp it
fully. Now he broke out without the least relevancy to it, “I wonder how
it would do to remodel my story so far as to transfer the scene to New
York? It might be more popular.” The criticism that one of those readers
had made on the helplessness of his fidelity to simple rustic conditions
had suddenly begun to gall him afresh. “I beg your pardon. I _didn’t_
notice what you were saying! I can’t get my mind off that miserable
thing!”
Kane laughed. “Oh, don’t apologize. I know how it is. Perhaps a change
of scene _would_ be good; it’s often advised, you know.” He laughed
again, and Ray with him, ruefully, and now he rose.
“Oh, must you go?” Ray entreated.
“Yes. You are best alone; when we are in pain we _are_, alone, anyway.
If misery loves company, company certainly does not love misery. I can
stand my own troubles, but not other people’s. Good-by! We will meet
again when you are happier.”