Ray followed Hughes to his grave in the place where Denton and his
children were already laid. It did not seem as if the old man were more
related to them in death than he had been in life by their propinquity;
but it satisfied a belated maternal and conjugal sentiment in Mrs.
Denton. She did not relinquish the leading place in the family affairs
which she had taken in her father’s last days. She decided against
staying in their present apartment after their month was out, and found
a tiny flat of three rooms in a better neighborhood down-town, where she
had their scanty possessions established, including the cat.
Kane did not go to the funeral because of a prejudice which he said he
had against such events; David Hughes, he said, would have been the
first to applaud his sincerity in staying away. But he divined that
there might be need of help of another kind in the emergency, and he
gave it generously and delicately. He would not suffer Mr. Brandreth to
render any part of this relief; he insisted that it was his exclusive
privilege as Hughes’s old friend. Now that David was gone, he professed
a singularly vivid sense of his presence; and he owned that he had
something like the pleasure of carrying a point against him in
defraying his funeral expenses.
Hughes’s daughters accepted his help frankly, each after her kind: Mrs.
Denton as a gift which it must long continue to be; Peace as a loan
which must some day be repaid. The girl went back to her work in due
time, and whenever Ray visited his publisher he saw her at her desk.
He did not always go to speak to her, for he had a shamefaced fear that
she was more or less always engaged in working up hints from Mr.
Brandreth into paragraphs about a _A Modern Romeo_. His consciousness
exaggerated the publisher’s activity in this sort; and at first he
shunned all these specious evidences of public interest in the
forthcoming novel. Then he began jealously to look for them, and in his
mind he arraigned the journals where they did not appear for envy and
personal spite. It would have been difficult for him to prove why there
should have been either in his case, unless it was because their
literary notes were controlled by people whose books had been ignored or
censured by _Every Evening_, and this theory could not hold with all.
Most of the papers, however, published the paragraphs, with that
munificence which journalism shows towards literature. The author found
the inspired announcements everywhere; sometimes they were varied by the
office touch, but generally they were printed exactly as Mr. Brandreth
framed them; however he found them, they gave Ray an insensate joy. Even
the paragraphs in the trade journals, purely perfunctory as they were,
had a flavor of sincere appreciation; the very advertisements which
accompanied them there affected him like favorable expressions of
opinion. His hunger for them was inappeasable; in his heart he accused
Mr. Brandreth of a stinted proclamation.
The publisher was hurrying the book forward for the summer trade, and
was aiming it especially at the reader going into the country, or
already there. He had an idea that the summer resorts had never been
fully worked in behalf of the better sort of light literature, and he
intended to make any sacrifice to get the book pushed by the news
companies. He offered them rates ruinously special, and he persuaded Ray
to take five per cent. on such sales if they could be made. He pressed
forward the printing, and the author got his proofs in huge batches,
with a demand for their prompt return. The nice revision which he had
fancied himself giving the work in type was impossible; it went from his
hand with crudities that glared in his tormented sense, till a new
instalment eclipsed the last. He balanced the merits and defects against
one another, and tried to believe that the merits would distract the
attention of criticism from the defects. He always knew that the story
was very weak in places; he conceived how it could be attacked in these;
he attacked it himself with pitiless ridicule in a helpless
impersonation of different reviewers; and he gasped in his
self-inflicted anguish. When the last proof left his hands the feeblest
links were the strength of the whole chain, which fell to pieces from
his grasp like a rope of sand.
There was some question at different times whether the book had not
better be published under a pseudonym, and Ray faithfully submitted it
to the editor of _Every Evening_, as something he was concerned in. It
was to be considered whether it was advisable for a critic to appear as
an author, and whether the possible failure of the book would not react
unfavorably upon the criticisms of the journal. The chief decided that
it would make no difference to him, and at the worst it could do no more
than range Ray with the other critics who had failed as authors. With
the publisher it was a more serious matter, and he debated much whether
the book, as a stroke of business, had not better go to the public
anonymously. They agreed that P. B. S. Ray on the title-page would be
rather formidable from the number of the initials which the reader would
have to master in speaking of the author. Shelley Ray, on the other
hand, would be taken for a sentimental pseudonym. They decided that
anonymity was the only thing for it.
“But then, it will be losing the interest of your money, if the book
goes,” Mr. Brandreth mused. “You have a right to the cumulative
reputation from it, so that if you should write another”--
“Oh, don’t be afraid of there ever being another!” said Ray, with his
distracted head between his hands. He suddenly lifted it. “What is the
matter with the Spartan severity of S. Ray?”
“S. Ray might do,” Mr. Brandreth assented, thoughtfully. “Should you
mind my asking Mrs. Brandreth how it strikes her?”
“Not at all. Very glad to have you. It’s short, and unpretentious, and
non-committal. I think it might do.”
Mrs. Brandreth thought so too, and in that form the author’s name
appeared on the title-page. Even in that form it did not escape question
and censure. One reviewer devoted his criticism of the story to inquiry
into the meaning of the author’s initial; another surmised it a mask.
But, upon the whole, its simplicity piqued curiosity, and probably
promoted the fortune of the book, as far as that went.
There was no immediate clamor over it. In fact, it was received so
passively by the public and the press that the author might well have
doubted whether there was any sort of expectation of it, in spite of the
publisher’s careful preparation of the critic’s or the reader’s mind.
There came back at once from obscure quarters a few echoes, more or less
imperfect, of the synopsis of the book’s attractions sent out with the
editorial copies, but the influential journals remained
heart-sickeningly silent concerning _A Modern Romeo_. There was a
boisterous and fatuous eulogy of the book in the Midland _Echo_, which
Ray knew for the expression of Sanderson’s friendship; but eager as he
was for recognition, he could not let this count; and it was followed by
some brief depreciatory paragraphs in which he perceived the willingness
of Hanks Brothers to compensate themselves for having so handsomely let
Sanderson have his swing. He got some letters of acknowledgment from
people whom he had sent the book; he read them with hungry zest, but he
could not make himself believe that they constituted impartial opinion;
not even the letter of the young lady who had detected him in the
panoply of his hero, and who now wrote to congratulate him on a success
which she too readily took for granted. One of his sisters replied on
behalf of his father and mother, and said they had all been sitting up
reading the story aloud together, and that their father liked it as much
as any of them; now they were anxious to see what the papers would say;
had he read the long review in the _Echo_, and did not he think it
rather cool and grudging for a paper that he had been connected with? He
hardly knew whether this outburst of family pride gave him more or less
pain than an anonymous letter which he got from his native village, and
which betrayed the touch of the local apothecary; his correspondent, who
also dealt in books, and was a man of literary opinions, heaped the
novel with ridicule and abuse, and promised the author a coat of tar and
feathers on the part of his betters whom he had caricatured, if ever he
should return to the place. Ray ventured to offer a copy to the lady who
had made herself his social sponsor in New York, and he hoped for some
intelligent praise from her. She asked him where in the world he had got
together such a lot of queer people, like nothing on earth but those one
used to meet in the old days when one took country board; she mocked at
the sufferings of his hero, and said what a vulgar little piece his
heroine was; but she supposed he meant them to be what they were, and
she complimented him on his success in handling them. She confessed,
though, that she never read American novels, or indeed any but French
ones, and that she did not know exactly where to rank his work; she
burlesqued a profound impression of the honor she ought to feel in
knowing a distinguished novelist. “You’ll be putting us all into your
next book, I suppose. Mind you give me golden hair, not yet streaked
with silver.”
In the absence of any other tokens of public acceptance, Ray kept an
eager eye out for such signs of it as might be detected in the
booksellers’ windows and on their sign-boards. The placards of other
novels flamed from their door-jambs, but they seemed to know nothing of
_A Modern Romeo_. He sought his book in vain among those which formed
the attractions of their casements; he found it with difficulty on their
counters, two or three rows back, and in remote corners. It was like a
conspiracy to keep it out of sight; it was not to be seen on the
news-stands of the great hotels or the elevated stations, and Ray
visited the principal railway depots without detecting a copy.
He blamed Mr. Brandreth for a lack of business energy in all this; he
would like to see him fulfil some of those boasts of push which, when he
first heard them, made him creep with shame. Mr. Brandreth had once
proposed a file of sandwich men appealing with successive bill-boards:
I.
HAVE YOU READ
II.
“A MODERN ROMEO?”
III.
EVERY ONE IS READING
IV.
“A MODERN ROMEO.”
V.
WHY?
VI.
BECAUSE
VII.
“A MODERN ROMEO” IS
VIII.
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.
Ray had absolutely forbidden this procession, but now he would have
taken off his hat to it, and stood uncovered, if he could have met it in
Union Square or in Twenty-third Street.