Ray had no doubt that Kane was the court of final resort which the case
against his novel had been appealed to, and he thought it hard that he
should have refused to give it a last chance, or even to look at it
again. Surely it was not so contemptible as that, so hopelessly bad that
a man who seemed his friend could remember nothing in it that would make
it valuable in a second reading. If the fault were not in the book, then
it must be in the friend, and Ray renounced old Kane by every means he
could command. He could not make it an open question; he could only
treat him more and more coldly, and trust to Kane’s latent sense of
guilt for the justification of his behavior. But Kane was either so
hardened, or else regarded his own action as so venial, or perhaps
believed it so right, that he did not find Ray’s coldness intelligible.
“My dear young friend,” he frankly asked, “is there anything between us
but our disparity of years? That existed from the first moment of our
acquaintance. I have consoled myself at times with the notion of our
continuing together in an exemplary friendship, you growing older and
wiser, and I younger and less wise, if possible, like two Swedenborgian
spirits in the final state. But evidently something has happened to
tinge our amity with a grudge in your mind. Do you object to saying just
what property in me has imparted this unpleasant discoloration to it?”
Ray was ashamed to say, or rather unable. He answered that nothing was
the matter, and that he did not know what Kane meant. He was obliged to
prove this by a show of cordiality, which he began perhaps to feel when
he reasoned away his first resentment. Kane had acted quite within his
rights, and if there was to be any such thing as honest criticism, the
free censure of a friend must be suffered and even desired. He said this
to himself quite heroically; he tried hard to be ruled by a truth so
obvious.
In other things his adversity demoralized him, for a time. He ceased to
live in the future, as youth does and should do; he lived carelessly and
wastefully in the present. With nothing in prospect, it was no longer
important how his time or money went; he did not try to save either. He
never finished his poem, and he did not attempt anything else.
In the midst of his listlessness and disoccupation there came a letter
from Hanks Brothers asking if he could not give a little more social
gossip in his correspondence for the _Echo_; they reminded him that
there was nothing people liked so much as personalities. Ray scornfully
asked himself, How should he, who knew only the outsides of houses,
supply social gossip, even if he had been willing? He made a sarcastic
reply to Hanks Brothers, intimating his readiness to relinquish the
correspondence if it were not to their taste; and they took him at his
word, and wrote that they would hereafter make use of a syndicate
letter.
It had needed this blow to rouse him from his reckless despair. If he
were defeated now, it would be in the face of all the friends who had
believed in him and expected success of him. His motive was not high; it
was purely egoistic at the best; but he did not know this; he had a
sense of virtue in sending his book off to a Boston publisher without
undoing the inner wrappings in which the last New York publisher had
returned it.
Then he went round to ask Mr. Brandreth if he knew of any literary or
clerical or manual work he could get to do. The industrial fury which
has subdued a continent, and brought it under the hard American hand,
wrought in him, according to his quality, and he was not only willing
but eager to sacrifice the scruples of delicacy he had in appealing to a
man whom he had sought first on such different terms. His only question
was how to get his business quickly, clearly, and fully before him.
Mr. Brandreth received him with a gayety that put this quite out of his
mind; and he thought the publisher was going to tell him that he had
decided, after all, to accept his novel.
“Ah, Mr. Ray,” Mr. Brandreth called out at sight of him, “I was just
sending a note to you! Sit down a moment, won’t you? The editor of
_Every Evening_ was in here just now, and he happened to say he wished
he knew some one who could make him a synopsis of a rather important
book he’s had an advanced copy of from the other side. It’s likely to be
of particular interest in connection with Coquelin’s visit; it’s a study
of French comic acting from Molière down; and I happened to think of
you. You know French?”
“Why, yes, thank you--to read. You’re very kind, Mr. Brandreth, to think
of me.”
“Oh, not at all! I didn’t know whether you ever did the kind of thing
the _Every Evening_ wants, or whether you were not too busy; but I
thought I’d drop an anchor to windward for you, on the chance that you
might like to do it.”
“I should like very much to do it; and”--
“I’ll tell you why I did it,” Mr. Brandreth interrupted, radiantly. “I
happened to know they’re making a change in the literary department of
the _Every Evening_, and I thought that if this bit of work would let
you show your hand--See?”
“Yes; and I’m everlastingly”--
“Not at all, not at all!” Mr. Brandreth opened the letter he was
holding, and gave Ray a note that it inclosed. “That’s an introduction
to the editor of the _Every Evening_, and you’ll strike him at the
office about now, if you’d like to see him.”
Ray caught with rapture the hand Mr. Brandreth offered him. “I don’t
know what to say to you, but I’m extremely obliged. I’ll go at once.” He
started to the door, and turned. “I hope Mrs. Brandreth is well,
and--and--the baby?”
“Splendidly. I shall want to have you up there again as soon as we can
manage it. Why haven’t you been at Mrs. Chapley’s? Didn’t you get her
card?”
“Yes; but I haven’t been very good company of late. I didn’t want to
have it generally known.”
“I understand. Well, now you must cheer up. Good-by, and good luck to
you!”
All the means of conveyance were too slow for Ray’s eagerness, and he
walked. On his way down to that roaring and seething maelstrom of
business, whose fierce currents swept all round the _Every Evening_
office, he painted his future as critic of the journal with minute
detail; he had died chief owner and had his statue erected to his memory
in Park Square before he crossed that space and plunged into one of the
streets beyond.
He was used to newspaper offices, and he was not surprised to find the
editorial force of the _Every Evening_ housed in a series of dens,
opening one beyond the other till the last, with the chief in it, looked
down on the street from which he climbed. He thought it all fit enough,
for the present; but, while he still dwelt in the future, and before the
office-boy had taken his letter from him to the chief, he swiftly flung
up a building for the _Every Evening_ as lofty and as ugly as any of the
many-storied towers that rose about the frantic neighborhood. He
blundered upon two other writers before he reached the chief; one of
them looked up from his desk, and roared at him in unintelligible
affliction; the other simply wagged his head, without lifting it, in the
direction of the final room, where Ray found himself sitting beside the
editor-in-chief, without well knowing how he got there. The editor did
not seem to know either, or to care that he was there, for some time; he
kept on looking at this thing and that thing on the table before him; at
everything but the letter Ray had sent in. When he did take that up he
did not look at Ray; and while he talked with him he scarcely glanced at
him; there were moments when he seemed to forget there was anybody
there; and Ray’s blood began to burn with a sense of personal indignity.
He wished to go away, and leave the editor to find him gone at his
leisure; but he felt bound to Mr. Brandreth, and he staid. At last the
editor took up a book from the litter of newspapers and manuscripts
before him, and said:
“What we want is a rapid and attractive _résumé_ of this book, with
particular reference to Coquelin and his place on the stage and in art.
No one else has the book yet, and we expect to use the article from it
in our Saturday edition. See what you can do with it, and bring it here
by ten to-morrow. You can run from one to two thousand words--not over
two.”
He handed Ray the book and turned so definitively to his papers and
letters again that Ray had no choice but to go. He left with the editor
a self-respectful parting salutation, which the editor evidently had no
use for, and no one showed a consciousness of him, not even the
office-boy, as he went out.
He ground his teeth in resentment, but he resolved to take his revenge
by making literature of that _résumé_, and compelling the attention of
the editor to him through his work. He lost no time in setting about it;
he began to read the book at once, and he had planned his article from
it before he reached his hotel. He finished it before he slept, and he
went to bed as the first milkman sent his wail through the street below.
His heart had worked itself free of its bitterness, and seemed to have
imparted its lightness to the little paper, which he was not ashamed of
even when he read it after he woke from the short rest he suffered
himself. He was sure that the editor of _Every Evening_ must feel the
touch which he knew he had imparted to it, and he made his way to him
with none of the perturbation, if none of the romantic interest of the
day before.
The editor took the long slips which Ray had written his copy on, and
struck them open with his right hand while he held them with his left.
“Why the devil,” he demanded, “don’t you write a better hand?” Before
Ray could formulate an answer, he shouted again, “Why the devil don’t
you begin with a _fact_?”
He paid no heed to the defence which the hurt author-pride of the young
fellow spurred him to make, but went on reading the article through.
When he had finished he threw it down and drew toward him a narrow book
like a check-book, and wrote in it, and then tore out the page, and gave
it to Ray. It was an order on the counting-room for fifteen dollars.
Ray had a weak moment of rage in which he wished to tear it up and
fling it in the editor’s face. But he overcame himself and put the order
in his pocket. He vowed never to use it, even to save himself from
starving, but he kept it because he was ashamed to do otherwise. Even
when the editor at the sound of his withdrawal called out, without
looking round, “What is your address?” he told him; but this time he
wasted no parting salutations upon him.
The hardest part was now to make his acknowledgments to Mr. Brandreth,
without letting him know how little his personal interest in the matter
had availed. He succeeded in keeping everything from him but the fact
that his work had been accepted, and Mr. Brandreth was delighted.
“Well, that’s first-rate, as far as it goes, and I believe it’s going to
lead to something permanent. You’ll be the literary man of _Every
Evening_ yet; and I understand the paper’s making its way. It’s a good
thing to be connected with; thoroughly clean and decent, and yet
lively.”
Though Ray hid his wrath from Mr. Brandreth, because it seemed due to
his kindness, he let it break out before Kane, whom he found dining
alone at his hotel that evening when he came down from his room.
“I don’t know whether I ought to sit down with you,” he began, when Kane
begged him to share his table. “I’ve just been through the greatest
humiliation I’ve had yet. It’s so thick on me that I’m afraid some of it
will come off. And it wasn’t my fault, either; it was my misfortune.”
“We can bear to suffer for our misfortunes,” said Kane, dreamily. “To
suffer for our faults would be intolerable, because then we couldn’t
preserve our self-respect. Don’t you see? But the consciousness that our
anguish is undeserved is consoling; it’s even flattering.”
“I’m sorry to deprive you of a _Hard Saying_, if that’s one, but my
facts are against you.”
“Ah, but facts must always yield to reasons,” Kane began.
Ray would not be stopped. But he suddenly caught the humorous aspect of
his adventure with the editor of _Every Evening_, and gave it with
artistic zest. He did not spare his ridiculous hopes or his ridiculous
pangs.
From time to time Kane said, at some neat touch: “Oh, good!” “Very
good!” “Capital!” “Charming, charming!” When Ray stopped, he drew a long
breath, and sighed out: “Yes, I know the man. He’s not a bad fellow.
He’s a very good fellow.”
“A good fellow?” Ray demanded. “Why did he behave like a brute, then?
He’s the only man who’s been rude to me in New York. Why couldn’t he
have shown me the same courtesy that all the publishers have? Every one
of them has behaved decently, though none of them, confound them! wanted
my book.”
“Ah,” said Kane, “his conditions were different. They had all some
little grace of leisure, and according to your report he had none. I
don’t know a more pathetic picture than you’ve drawn of him, trying to
grasp all those details of his work, and yet seize a new one. It’s
frightful. Don’t you feel the pathos of it?”
“No man ought to place himself in conditions where he has to deny
himself the amenities of life,” Ray persisted, and he felt that he had
made a point, and languaged it well. “He’s to blame if he does.”
“Oh, no man willingly places himself in hateful or injurious
conditions,” said Kane. “He is pushed into them, or they grow up about
him through the social action. He’s what they shape him to, and when
he’s taken his shape from circumstances, he knows instinctively that he
won’t fit into others. So he stays put. You would say that the editor of
_Every Evening_ ought to forsake his conditions at any cost, and go
somewhere else and be a civilized man; but he couldn’t do that without
breaking himself in pieces and putting himself together again. Why did I
never go back to my own past? I look over my life in New York, and it is
chiefly tiresome and futile in the retrospect; I couldn’t really say why
I’ve staid here. I don’t expect anything of it, and yet I can’t leave
it. The _Every Evening_ man does expect a great deal of his conditions;
he expects success, and I understand he’s getting it. But he didn’t
place himself in his conditions in any dramatic way, and he couldn’t
dramatically break with them. They may be gradually detached from him
and then he may slowly change. Of course there are signal cases of
renunciation. People have abdicated thrones and turned monks; but
they’ve not been common, and I dare say, if the whole truth could be
known, they have never been half the men they were before, or become
just the saints they intended to be. If you’ll take the most
extraordinary instance of modern times, or of all times--if you’ll take
Tolstoï himself, you’ll see how impossible it is for a man to rid
himself of his environment. Tolstoï believes unquestionably in a life of
poverty and toil and trust; but he has not been able to give up his
money; he is defended against want by the usual gentlemanly sources of
income; and he lives a ghastly travesty of his unfulfilled design. He’s
a monumental warning of the futility of any individual attempt to escape
from conditions. That’s what I tell my dear old friend Chapley, who’s
quite Tolstoï mad, and wants to go into the country and simplify
himself.”
“Does he, really?” Ray asked, with a smile.
“Why not? Tolstoï convinces your reason and touches your heart. There’s
no flaw in his logic and no falsity in his sentiment. I think that if
Tolstoï had not become a leader, he would have had a multitude of
followers.”
The perfection of his paradox afforded Kane the highest pleasure. He
laughed out his joy in it, and clapped Ray on the shoulder, and provoked
him to praise it, and was so frankly glad of having made it that all
Ray’s love of him came back.