XIV
March 5. Though I committed the rudeness of refusing to call, you never in our subsequent intercourse varied your manner by the slightest shade, treating me always with a courtesy I ill deserved. After such a rebuff, it is true, you were too self-respecting to offer me again any favor tending to a better acquaintance, but otherwise you bore yourself towards me as you did towards the thousand other men whom you were obliged to meet.
Your life as a social favorite, and mine as a literary hack, gave little opportunity for our seeing each other, yet we met far more frequently than would have seemed possible. Occasionally I found you at the Blodgetts', though not as often as our informal footing in that household had led me to hope; for you were in such social demand that your morning hours were the time you usually took to run in upon them. But now and then we lunched or dined there, and Mrs. Blodgett little dreamed how willingly I obeyed her positive command that I was to come to every one of her afternoons when Agnes told me that you were to receive or pour tea. Little I had of your attention, for you were a magnet to many, but I could stand near you and could watch and listen, and that was happiness.
A cause of meeting more discordant to me was furnished by my employer. I wrote for him an editorial on the folk-leid basis of the Wagner trilogy, which I suppose he sent or read to you; for it resulted in a box-party to attend the series, and I was asked to be one of the guests. "Nothing like having your books of reference under your arm," was Mr. Whitely's way of telling me for what purpose I was wanted; and I presume that was, in truth, the light in which he viewed me. Though I scorned such service, the mere fact that you were to be there was enough to make me accept. How low love can bring a man if his spirit is once mastered by it!
I would have sunk far deeper, I believe, to obtain what I earned, for there were delightful moments of mutually absorbing discussions, only too quickly interrupted by Mr. Whitely or others of the party breaking in on our conversation. What was equal happiness to me was the association of you in my mind with the noblest of music. I can never hear certain movements of those operas without your image coming before me as clearly as if I saw your reflection in a mirror. And from that time one of my keenest pleasures has been to beg tickets from the musical critic of our staff, whenever one of the trilogy is to be given, and sit through the opera dreaming of those hours. I could write here every word you uttered, but what especially impressed itself upon my memory was something called out by the fate of Brunhilde. As we stood in the lobby waiting for the carriages, at the end of Die Walküre, you withdrew a little, as if still feeling the beauty and tragedy of the last act too deeply to take part in the chit-chat with which the rest of the party beguiled the time. I stood near you, but, respecting your mood, was silent too, until you finally broke the pause by saying, "I do not know whether it is Wagner's music or because Brunhilde appeals to me, but I always feel that I have suffered as she does. It almost makes me believe in the theory of metempsychosis."
"Is it so much consciousness of a past, Miss Walton," I suggested, "as prescience of the future? Woman's story is so unvaryingly that of self-sacrifice for love that I should suppose Brunhilde's fate would appeal to the sex as a prophecy rather than as a memory."
"Her punishment could have been far worse."
"Left a defenseless prey to the first comer?"
"But surrounded by fire, so that the first comer must be a brave man."
"Do you value courage so highly?"
"Yes. The truly brave, I think, cannot be mean, and without meanness there must be honor. I almost envy Brunhilde her walls of fire, which put to absolute proof any man who sought her. The most successful of men; the most intellectually brilliant, may be – By what can we to-day test courage and honor?"
"There is as much as ever, Miss Walton. Is it no gain that courage has become moral rather than physical?"
"Is it no loss that of all the men I know, there is not one of whom I can say with certainty, 'He is a brave man'?"
Our numbers were called at this point, and the conversation was never continued. Every word you had said recalled to me my former friend, and I understood your repugnance for anything cowardly.
At the last of these operas, by another perverse joke of Dame Fortune, who seems to have so many laughs at my expense, I was introduced to the chaperon, "Mrs. Polhemus." Looking up, I found myself facing my mother. I cannot tell you how strangely I felt in making my bow. She was as handsome as ever, it appeared to me, and the smooth rich olive complexion seemed to have given her an undying youth. For a moment I feared recognition, but the difference was too great between the pallid stooping boy of fifteen she had last seen in Paris and the straight bronzed man of twenty-seven. As of old she was magnificently dressed and fairly glittered with diamonds, which curiously enough instantly brought to my mind the face of my father as I kissed him last. Was it the strong connection of contrast, or was it a quirk of my brain?
This chance meeting had a sequel that pains me to this day. Dining the next evening at the Blodgetts' with you and your uncle, the latter spoke of my mother's diamonds. Mrs. Blodgett said, with a laugh, "One would think, after her rich marriage, that she might pay up the money her first husband stole from Maizie."
"She could have done that years ago if she had cared to," sneered Mr. Walton.
Your eyes were lowered, and you still kept them so as you replied, "I would not accept the money from Mrs. Polhemus."
In my suffering I sat rigid and speechless, wincing inwardly at each blow of the lash, when Mr. Blodgett, with a kindness I can never reward or even acknowledge, observed, "I believe it was his wife's extravagance which made William Maitland a bankrupt and an embezzler. Till his marriage with her he was a man of simple habits and of unquestioned business honesty, but he was caught by her looks, just as Polhemus has been. In those first years he could deny her nothing, and when the disillusionment came he was too deep in to prevent the wreck."
"You've been revising your views a bit," retorted Mr. Walton. "I never expected to hear you justify any of that family."
"Perhaps I have reason to," replied Mr. Blodgett.
"I don't believe any of those Maitlands have the least honesty!" exclaimed Agnes. "How I hate them!"
"It is not a subject of which I like to speak," you stated in an evidently controlled voice, still with lowered eyes, "but it is only right to say that some one – I suppose the son – is beginning to pay back the debt."
"Pay back the money, Maizie!" ejaculated Mr. Walton. "Why haven't you told me of it?"
"It did not seem necessary," you answered.
"I'm sure it's a trick," asserted Agnes. "He's probably trying to worm his way back to your friendship, to get something more out of you."
"How much" – began Mr. Walton; but you interrupted him there by saying, "I would rather not talk about it."
The subject was changed at once, but when we were smoking, Mr. Walton asked, "Blodgett, do you know anything about that Maitland affair?"
"A little," replied the host.
"The debt really is being paid?"
"Yes."
"And you don't know by whom?"
"So Maizie tells me."
"Has she made no attempt to find out?"
"When the first payment was made she came to me for advice."
"Well?" asked Mr. Walton eagerly.
"She got it," declared Mr. Blodgett.
"What did she do?" persisted Mr. Walton.
Mr. Blodgett was silent for a moment, and then responded, "The exact opposite of what I advised. Do you know, Walton, you and I remind me of the warm-hearted elephant who tried to hatch the ostrich eggs by sitting on them."
"In what respect?"
"We decided that we must break up Maizie's love of the Maitlands for her own good."
"Well?"
"Well, we made the whole thing so mean to her that finally we did break something. Then, manlike, we were satisfied. What was it we broke?"
"Nonsense!" growled Mr. Walton, sipping his wine.
Mr. Blodgett laughed slightly. "That's rather a good name for it," he assented; "but the trouble is, Walton, that nonsense is a very big part of every woman's life. You'll never get me to fool with it again."
I often ponder over those three brief remarks of yours, and of what you said to me last autumn, in our ride and in the upper hall of My Fancy, trying to learn, if possible, what your feeling is towards us. Can you, despite all that has intervened, still feel any tenderness and love for my father and me? Perhaps it was best that you were silent; if you had spoken of him with contempt, I think – I know you would not, my darling, for you loved him once, and that, to you, would be reason enough to be merciful to the dead, however sinning.
Dear love, good-night.
XV
March 6. You once said to me that you could conceive of no circumstances that would justify dishonesty; for, no matter what the seeming benefits might be, the indirect consequences and the effect on the misdoer's character more than neutralized them. The wrong I have done has only proved your view, and I have come to scorn myself for the dishonorable part I have played. Yet I think that you would pity more than blame me, if you could but know my sacrifices. I drifted into the fraud unconsciously, and cannot now decide at what point the actual stifling of my conscience began. I suppose the first misstep was when I entered Mr. Whitely's employment; yet though I knew it to be unscrupulous in him to impose my editorials as his own, it still seemed to me no distinct transgression in me to write them for him. With that first act those that followed became possible, and each involved so slight an increase in the moral lapse, and my debt to you was so potent an excuse to blind me, that at the time I truly thought I was doing right. I wonder what you would have done had you been in my position?
Mr. Blodgett's shrewdness in stipulating what work I was to do for Mr. Whitely quickly proved itself. One of the magazines asked my employer to contribute an article on The Future of Journalism. Handing me the letter, he said, "Dr. Hartzmann, kindly write a couple of thousand words on that subject."
"That surely is not part of my duty, Mr. Whitely," I had the courage to respond.
He looked at me quickly, and his mouth stiffened into a straight line. "Does that mean that you do not choose to do it?" he asked suavely.
My heart failed me at the thought that if I lost my position I might never get so good a one, and should drag my debt through life. For once thought of you made me cowardly. I answered, "I will write it, Mr. Whitely;" and he said, "I thank you," as if I had done him a favor.
I told Mr. Blodgett of the incident, that evening, with a wry face and a laugh over my bravery, and he was furious at me.
"Why, you – you" – he stuttered. "Haven't you learned yet that the man wouldn't part with you for anything? He's so stuck up over his editorials and what people say of them that he'd as soon think of discharging his own mother before she weaned him."
Not content with venting his anger on me, he came into the office the next day and told Mr. Whitely I should not be imposed on, and finally forced him to agree that I should receive whatever the review paid for the article.
After this I wrote several magazine articles for Mr. Whitely, and soon another development of our curious relations occurred. One afternoon he informed me, "The Library trustees request me to deliver an address at the dedication of the building. I shall be grateful for any suggestions you can make of a proper subject."
"Books?" I replied, with an absolutely grave face.
"That is eminently suitable," he responded. "Possibly you can spare the time to compose such a paper; and as it should be of a scholarly character some Greek and Latin seem to me advisable."
"How much?" I asked, inwardly amused to note if he would understand my question, or would suppose it referred to the quantity of dead languages I was to inject.
"What is the labor worth?" he inquired, setting my doubt at rest, and proving his business ability to recognize the most distant allusion to a dollar. When I named a price, he continued: "That is excessive. The profession of authorship is so little recompensed that there are many good writers in New York who would gladly do it for less."
"I can do it cheaper, if, like them, I crib it from books at the Astor," I asserted.
"I do not see why an address composed in the Astor Library should not be entirely satisfactory?" he questioned, in his smooth, self-controlled manner.
"Did you never hear of the man who left the theatre in the middle of Hamlet because, he said, he didn't care to hear a play that was all quotations?" I asked, with a touch of irony.
"I presume the story has some connection in your mind with the subject in hand, but I am unable to see the appositeness?" he said interrogatively and evidently puzzled.
"I merely mentioned it lest you might not know that Pope never lived in Grub Street."
He looked at me, still ignorant that I was laughing at him. "You think it injudicious to have it done by Mather?" he questioned, naming a fellow who did special work for the paper at times.
"Not at all," I replied, "provided you label the address 'hash,' so that people who have some discrimination won't suppose you ignorant that it is twice-cooked meat you are giving them," and, turning, I went on with my work as if the matter were ended.
But the next day he told me, "I have concluded to have you compose that oration, Dr. Hartzmann;" and from that moment of petty victory I have not feared my employer.
I wrote the address, and it so pleased Mr. Whitely that, not content with delivering it, he had it handsomely printed, and sent copies to all his friends.
The resulting praise he received clearly whetted his appetite for authorship, for not long after he said to me, "Dr. Hartzmann, you told me, when you sold me this library, that you were writing a history of the Turks. How nearly completed is it?"
"I hope to have it ready for press within three months."
"For some time," he remarked, "I have meditated the writing of a book, and possibly yours will serve my purpose."
I was so taken by surprise that for a moment I merely gazed at him, since it seemed impossible that even egotism so overwhelming as his could be capable of such blindness; but he was in earnest, and I could only revert to Mr. Blodgett's idea that a business man comes to think in time that anything he can buy is his. I smiled, and answered, "My book is not petroleum, Mr. Whitely."
"If it is what I desire, I will amply remunerate you," he offered.
"It is not for sale."
"I presume," he replied, "that you know what disposition of your book suits you best. I have, however, noticed in you a strong desire to obtain money, and I feel sure that we could arrange terms that will bring you more than you would otherwise receive."
Even before Mr. Whitely finished speaking, I realized that I was not a free agent. I owed a debt, and till it was paid I had no right to think of my own ambition or feelings. I caught my breath in anguish at the thought, and then, fearing that my courage would fail me, I spoke hastily: "What do you offer me?"
He smiled blandly as he predicted: "It is hardly a work that will have a large sale. The Turkish nation has not played an important part in history."
"Only conquered the key of the Old World, caused the Crusades, forced the discovery of America and of the Cape passage, compelled Europe to develop its own civilization instead of adopting that of the East, and furnished a question to modern statesmen that they have yet found no Œdipus to answer," I retorted.
"Your special pleading does tend to magnify their position," he assented. "I shall be happy to look the work over, leaving the terms to be decided later."
I am ashamed to confess what a night of suffering I went through, battling with the love and pride that had grown into my heart for my book. I knew from the first moment his proposition had been suggested that he would give me more than I could ever hope to make from the work, and therefore my course was only too plain; but I had a terrible struggle to force myself to carry my manuscript to him the following afternoon.
For the next week he was full of what he was reading; and had the circumstances been different, I could have asked no higher compliment as regards its popular interest than the enthusiasm of this unlettered business man for my book.
"It is quite as diverting as a romance!" he exclaimed. "I can already see how astonished people will be when they read of the far-reaching influence of that nation."
Since the pound of flesh was to be sold, I took advantage of this mood. After much haggling, which irritated and pained me more than it should, Mr. Whitely agreed to give me six thousand dollars and the royalties. Good as the terms were, my heart nearly broke, the day the manuscript left my hands, for I had put so much thought into the book that it had almost become part of myself. My father, too, had toiled over it, with fondest predictions of the fame it would bring me; spending, as it proved, his very life in the endeavor to make it a great work. That his love, that the love of my dear professors, and that my own hopes should all be brought to market and sold as if they were mere merchandise was so mercenary and cruel that at the last moment it was all I could do to bring myself to fulfill the bargain. Nothing but my small progress in paying my debt would have forced me to sell, and I hope nothing but that would have led me to join in such dishonesty. It was, after all, part of the price I was paying for the original wrong, and but just retribution against which I had no right to cry out. Yet for a month I was so sad that I could scarcely go through my day's toil; and though that was a year ago, I have never been able to work with the same vim, life seems to have so little left in it for me. And idle as the thought is, when I think of your praise of the book I cannot help dreaming of what might have been if it had been published in my name; if – Ah, well, to talk of "ifs" is only to confess that I am beaten, and that I will not do. Nor is the fight over. I never hoped nor attempted to gain your love, and that he has won you does not mean failure. To pay my debt is all I have to do, and though I may feel more ill and disheartened than I do to-night, I will pay it, come what may.
Good-night, my darling.
XVI
March 7. It is little to be proud of, yet I like to think that though I have behaved dishonestly, I have not entirely lost my sense of right and wrong. Twice at least have I faced temptation and been strong enough to resist.
When I carried to Mr. Blodgett the money I received for my book, I was so profoundly discouraged that my mood was only too apparent. In his kindness he suggested that I buy certain bonds of a railroad his firm was then reorganizing, – telling me from his inside knowledge that a year's holding would give me a profit of thirty per cent. It was so sore a temptation to make money without exertion and practically without risk that I assented, and authorized him to buy the securities; but a night's reflection made the dishonesty of my act clear to me, and the next morning I went to his office and told him I wished to countermand my order.
"What's that for?" he inquired.
"I have thought better of the matter, and do not think I have the right."
"Why not?"
"If this money were a trust in my hands, it would not be honest to use it in speculation, would it?"
"No."
"That is practically what it is, since it was stolen from a trust, and is to be returned to it."
He smiled rather grimly. "It's lucky for Wall Street," he said, "that you literary fellows don't have the making and enforcing of laws; and it's luckier still that you don't have to earn your living down here, for the money you'd make wouldn't pay your burial insurance." Yet though he laughed cynically, he shook my hand, I thought, more warmly than usual when we parted, as if he felt at heart that I had done right.
Much easier to resist was an offer of another kind. Very foolishly, I told Mr. Whitely that I had received a letter from the literary editor of the leading American review asking if I would write the criticism of the History of the Turks.
"That is a singular piece of good fortune," Mr. Whitely said cheerfully, "and guarantees me a complimentary notice in a periodical that rarely praises."
"That is by no means certain," I answered. "You know as well as I that it does not gloze a poor book, nor pass over defects in silence."
"But you can hardly write critically of your own book!" cried Mr. Whitely, for once giving me a share in our literary partnership. "For if there are defects you ought to have corrected them in proof."
"Of course I do not intend to write the review!" I exclaimed.
"Not write it? Why not?" he questioned in amazement equal to mine.
"Because I am absolutely unfitted to do it."
"Why, you know all about the subject!"
"I mean that no author can for a moment write discriminatingly of his own work; and besides, the offer would never have been made if my connection with the book were known."
"But they will never know."
"I should."
"You mean to say you do not intend to do it?"
"I shall write to-night declining."
"But I want you to do it."
"And I don't."
"What would they probably pay you for it?"
"What it is worth."
"If you will reconsider your determination, I will double the amount."
"Unfortunately," I laughed bitterly, "there are limits to what even I will sell."
"I will give you two hundred and fifty dollars if you will write a laudatory review of my book," he offered.
"Have you ever dealt in consciences, Mr. Whitely?" I asked.
"Occasionally."
"Did you ever get any as cheap as that?"
"Many."
"I'm afraid you were buying shopworn and second-hand articles," I retorted; "or you may have gone to some bargain counter where they make a specialty of ninety-eight and forty-nine cent goods."
He never liked this satirical mood into which he sometimes drove me. He hesitated an instant, and then bid, "Three hundred."
"This reminds me of Faust," I remarked; but he was too intent on the matter in hand to see the point.
"I suppose it's only a question of amount?" he suggested blandly.
"You are quite right, Mr. Whitely. I will write you that review if you will pay me my price," I assented.
"I knew it," he asserted exultingly. "But you are mistaken if you think I will pay any fancy price."
"Then it's a waste of time to talk any more about it," I answered, and resumed my work.
"It isn't worth three hundred, even," he argued, "but you may tell me what you will do it for."
"I will write that review for one hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars," I replied.
"What!"
"And from that price I will not abate one cent," I added.
Strangely enough, I did not write the notice.
It was amusing to see his eagerness for the criticisms of the book. The three American critical journals had notices eminently characteristic of them. The first was scholarly, praising moderately, with a touch of lemon-juice in the final paragraph that really only heightened its earlier commendation, but which made the book's putative author wince; the second was discriminating and balanced, with far more that was complimentary; while the third was the publisher's puff so regularly served up, – a colorless, sugary mush, – which my employer swallowed with much delectation. I am ashamed to say that I greatly enjoyed his pain over any harsh words. He always took for granted that the criticisms were correct, never realizing that as between an author, who has spent years on a book, and the average critic, who is at best superficial in his knowledge of a subject, the former is the more often right of the two. I tried to make this clear to him one day by asking him if he had never read Lord Brougham's review of Byron or Baron Jeffrey's review of Coleridge, and even brought him the astonishing tirades of those world-renowned critics; but it was time wasted. He preferred a flattering panegyric in the most obscure of little sheets to a really careful notice which praised less inordinately; yet while apparently believing all the flattery, he believed all the censoriousness as well, even in those cases known to every author where one critic praises what another blames.
"A Western paper says you do not know how to write English," he complained one day. "You ought to have taken more pains with the book, Dr. Hartzmann."
"The Academy and The Athenæum both thought my style had merit," I answered, smiling.
"Nevertheless there must be something wrong, or this critic, who in other respects praises with remarkable discrimination, would certainly not have gone out of his way to mention it," he replied discontentedly.
Fortunately, unfavorable criticism, both in Europe and in America, was the exception, and not the rule; the book was generally praised, and sprang into an instant sale that encouraged and cheered me. Mr. Whitely was immensely gratified at the sudden reputation it achieved for him, and even while drinking deep of the mead of fresh authorship told me he thought he would publish another book. I knew it was an opportunity to make more money, but for some reason I felt unequal to beginning anew on what would be a purely mercenary task. I mentioned my plan of a work on the Moors, and promised, when I felt able to commence it, I would talk with him about terms. That was three months ago, yet every day I seem to feel less inclination, and in fact less ability, to undertake the labor. For three years I have toiled to the utmost of my strength, and forced myself to endure the most rigid economy. It is cowardly, but at times I find myself hoping my present want of spirit and energy is the forerunner of an illness which will end the hopeless struggle.
Good-night, dear heart.