Another matter worried the writer when the clock struck one, and he found himself mechanically wiping the pen that had inscribed some twelve hundred and fifty words only instead of the regulation fifteen hundred. He felt humbled by a sense of failure most mortifying at his age, and though he put away his papers and went off to the club as usual, he was not in his customary spirits, and the younger novelists who listened for his good things, in order to repeat them to their friends, heard nothing worth taking home with them that day. One of the latter, indeed, broached very deftly the subject of Wolff Mason's books; but the veteran treated the subject with unnatural seriousness, was aware of the unnaturalness himself, and left the club before his time in an evil humour. And evil humours were the greatest rarity of all with the editor of the Mayfair, whom common consent credited with the most charming personality in literary London.
By two-thirty he was back in the editorial chair; the first of a newly-loaded set of pipes was in full blast under his nose, and the remaining contents of the little table under the window were being dealt with carefully and in turn. Not one of them proved to be of any use at all. In each case this kind-hearted man felt it his duty to pen a considerate little letter explaining the reason of rejection in the present instance, and encouraging the unsuccessful contributor to further effort. It is amazing, indeed, and little known, what a talent Wolff Mason had for the composition of kindly little notes of this nature; he made even the rejected love him, for his heartening words, and for the sympathy and humour with which he tempered disappointment to his tender young contributors.
Last of all this afternoon he returned to "A Good Father," and glanced over it again with a sigh. Then he took a sheet of Mayfair Magazine note-paper, and scrawled the date and "Dear Sir." There he stopped. After a few moments' hesitation, the spoilt sheet was dropped into the waste-paper basket, and a new note begun with "My" thrown in before the "Dear Sir." But the editor paused again.
"Confound the fellow," he cried at last, "I'll treat him as a friend! The chances are he'll turn and rend me; but here goes."
The note that was eventually written and posted ran as follows: —
"Dear Mr. Evan Evans, – I think that 'A Good Father' is excellent, but on the whole it does not strike me as being in your best style – which is capital. If I may be permitted to make an unofficial observation, you will, I think, pardon the expression of an old man's regret that a writer with a real sense of humour, like yourself, should subordinate it to what strikes one as an alien melancholy. If you would only write as cheerfully as you did some time back, I should be spared the disappointment of returning your MS., which I shall never do without peculiar and personal regrets.
"Yours very truly,"Wolff Mason."
The good editor breathed more freely when he had got this letter off his mind, and had addressed it to Evan Evans, Esq., 17, Cardigan Mansions, Kensington, W., and closed the envelope with his own hand and tongue. It was his last act at the office that day. As he tossed the letter into one basket, and the rejected manuscript into another, the clock on the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after four. And at half-past four in the afternoon, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, with the annual exception of a hateful holiday at some such place as Saltburn, the editor of the Mayfair Magazine returned to his club to play whist for an hour and a half precisely, with three kindred spirits as methodical and as enthusiastic as himself.
But this was the exceptional day which proved every rule of Wolff Mason's most ruly life by causing him to break each of them in turn. He played his cards towards evening as amateurishly as he had chosen his phrases in the forenoon. Now what is about to be written down may never be believed. But at five-thirty-three, by the card-room clock, Wolff Mason, who was more eminent among the few as a whist-player than as a writer of novels, put the last trump on his partner's thirteenth card. One has it on unimpeachable authority. A few minutes later the rubber came to an end, and, instead of playing out time, as the custom was with this sporting quartette, the novelist complained of a slight faintness (which explained everything) and left the club twenty minutes before six for the first time for many years.
One of the other three saw him into his hansom. He said that the air entirely revived him. It might have done so, if there had ever been anything the matter with him. He ailed nothing, however, beyond extreme and cumulative mortification; and the four winds of heaven, chasing each other round his temples as he drove westward, could not have blown that cobweb out of his respected head.
He could no longer feel surprised at anything that he might do, or say, or think. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the park he managed to think upon Evan Evans's latest story, now on its way back to that uneven contributor, and it seemed only natural that the shrewdest, most experienced magazine-editor in London should question the wisdom of his late decision in a way that would have made him laugh on any other occasion. He did not laugh now. The optimist of letters was in an incredibly pessimistic mood, in which the story he had refused seemed to him an ideal one for the magazine. He thought of his valued and most promising contributor, Evan Evans, of the manuscript now on its way back to him, of the possible effect of the rejection of so good a story upon a sensitive young man with a knowledge of other markets. Then he thought of this contributor's address, which was quite close to his own, and of the twenty minutes which he had in hand owing to his premature departure from the club. A word on the spur to the cab-man, a sharp turn to the left, some easy driving along a quiet street, and the hansom pulled up before the respectable portals of Cardigan Mansions, Nos. 11-22, whereof the stout attendant in uniform came forward and threw back the panels.
In another minute Wolff Mason was pressing the electric bell outside No. 17 on the second floor, and reflecting, with a qualm, that he was about to intrude upon a rejected contributor whom he had never seen – a truly startling reversal of a far too common editorial experience of his own. An elderly servant opened the door.
"Is Mr. Evans at home?"
"Mr. Hevans, sir?"
The servant looked as vacant as a woman need.
"Mr. Evan Evans," said the editor, distinctly, and with a smile as it struck him that there was no occasion in the world for him to leave his name. But a light had broken over the crass face of the elderly door-opener.
"Oh, I know, sir! He is in. Will you step this way?"
There was no drawing back now. Mr. Mason stepped boldly across the threshold, and the door closed behind him. In the very narrow passage the servant squeezed by him, and paused with her fingers on the handle of a door upon the right-hand side.
"What name shall I say, sir?"
"Mr. Wolff Mason."
A moment later the novelist-editor found himself standing in a more charming study than he himself owned to that day. It was all books and pictures, and weapons and pretty curtains, and comfortable chairs and handy tables. A good fire was burning, and on the right of it was a desk so placed that the writer looked out into the room as he sat at his work. The writer was sitting there now. He was a very young man, with a pipe in his mouth and a pen in his hand, and as he leant forward with the utmost eagerness, and the light of his writing-lamp fell full upon his youthful face, Wolff Mason had not the slightest difficulty in recognising Ida's presumptuous suitor of Saltburn-by-the-Sea.
"How do you do, Mr. Mason?" the young fellow said, coming forward with his hand frankly outstretched; but the other hesitated before taking it in his.
"Am I speaking to Mr. Evan Evans?"
"That is the name I – write stories under."
"Exactly. Your other name is not my concern. I don't seek to know it, Mr. Evans."
The editor was smiling grimly, but his gloved hand was now extended. Now, however, that of the young man went coolly into his trousers' pocket as he looked his visitor steadily in the face. They were grey flannel trousers, with yellow slippers at one end of them and a Norfolk jacket at the other. The editor's smile had turned to a look of interest.
"I called to see you about a little story, Mr. Evans."
"You have done me a very great honour, sir. Won't you sit down? Do you find it warm? Shall I open the window?"
"Not at all, not at all. I won't detain you a moment, and I won't sit down in one of your chairs, because they look comfortable, and I am stiff – though you wouldn't think it from my breaking in upon you like this, would you?"
Having shown very plainly that it was not his intention to recognise any former acquaintance, and seeing his young host take the cue from him in a way that struck him as at once manly and gentlemanly, Mr. Wolff Mason was now behaving in his own most charming fashion, which was very charming indeed to a young unknown beginner from a favourite old author whose name had been a household word for a quarter of a century at least. The beginner felt that if he had gauged the character of Wolff Mason correctly, when they first met at the sea-side, he would never have concealed the identity of Jack Overman with Evan Evans. But all thought of the old man's hardness upon a young one perished in an overwhelming sense of the great editor's kindness towards his utterly unknown contributor.
"I'll stand here, if I may, with my back to your fire. I looked in about the very clever little story you sent me yesterday."
The young author's face brightened till it quivered, but his words were all unworthy.
"How awfully kind of you!"
"Not at all, my dear sir. I was passing close to you, on my way home, and I was bothering about your story. I admire your work, but I don't altogether admire this story. My dear fellow, it ends too sadly altogether!"
"No other ending was possible," the young man declared. "So I felt, and one must write as one feels."
"Must one?" said the veteran, smiling blandly into the boyish earnest face. "Surely all things are possible to him who writes – unless, to be sure, he takes himself seriously!"
This, however, was not very seriously said, for Wolff Mason had turned round and was peering at the photographs on and over the mantel-piece. Suddenly he pushed up his spectacles and thrust his head close to a framed portrait, with a piece of stamp-paper stuck upon the glass to hide the face, but with the name in print underneath upon the mount.
"May I ask, young man," inquired Mr. Mason, as he favoured his contributor with a very comical stare, "why you have my photograph on the wall, in the first place; and, in the second, why the deuce you cover up my face?"
"You must ask the man who lives with me. He may come in any moment now."
"Did he do it?"
"I'm ashamed to say he did."
"Upon my word I should like to know why!"
"Well, sir, he bought me your photograph when you were accepting my stories; and he hid your face because he said – "
"Well, what did he say?"
"He talked such rot, sir!"
"I have no doubt."
"He was ass enough to say you'd certainly live to hide it yourself on my account! I'm afraid that he unduly admires my stuff. He's a fellow who is full of sympathy – "
"And not free from humour – by no means free!" cried Mr. Mason, laughing at the top of his voice (as he had never, never laughed at Saltburn-by-the-Sea). "But seriously, you are ending your later stories far too sadly. To come back to your last one – though I'm afraid it's coming back to you! I rejected it, and then, as I was driving home, I thought you would perhaps alter it, if I called and asked you before you sent it elsewhere. Don't you think you could soften your good father – just at the end?"
"I couldn't," said the young fellow, with a candid stare; but his eyes fell under the cool, kindly scrutiny of the elderly man, who continued gazing at the well-shaped head, on which the hair was perhaps a trifle long and untidy. For once that day Wolff Mason was the equal of the occasion, and he knew it to his consolation. The occasion, moreover, was the very one to which he would have desired to rise.
"Why couldn't you, my dear fellow?"
"Because it isn't life."
"Are you so sure that you know life?"
"I know it as I find it," said the young fellow bitterly; and there was a pause.
"Well, at any rate, you know that I like your stories."
"I am thankful to hear it."
"I want to accept them – "
"You are very kind."
"As many of them as ever you can write, and some day a long novel. I believe in you, Overton."
"Oh, sir, you are more than kind – to a raw recruit – on the ladder which you yourself – "
"My good Overton, why on earth didn't you mix those metaphors three months ago? Not that you're raw at all – unless it's with me!"
Two frail hands were laid on the young man's shoulders. He answered dryly:
"My other name isn't Overton. It's Overman. But I forgot, you said it wasn't your concern!"
"Ah, well, but the man who is to make the name famous is becoming my very grave concern. You should have let me know that you were in our swim, my boy."
"Before I was sure of keeping myself afloat? I thought I had a better chance as a – bad whist-player!"
"Confound the boy!" cried Wolff Mason, "but you were perfectly right, though your work is better than your whist."
"Then it was your magazine that I was writing for – you were the one man in England who could help me on – the whole situation was so liable to misconstruction!"
"It was – it was. And, now I think of it, you never brought me an introduction nor asked for an interview, nor wrote me a single superfluous line!"
"I wanted you to accept my stuff," said the young fellow, smiling.
But behind his spectacles the editor's eyes sparkled for an instant with something more than human kindness. He had made the grand discovery of his editorial life. He had discovered the ideal contributor, and for the moment he could only think of him as a young man of letters. Now, however, his right hand had found its way into that of young Overman, as he said with a comic solemnity:
"Look here, Overton, I was five minutes late in leaving the house this morning; for once in a way I don't mind if I'm five minutes late in getting back. I think that all you need do is to shave, though Ida might prefer you in another pair of bags and slippers. You can't improve upon that Norfolk jacket – but – but you and I must have another talk about the end of your story."
"AUTHOR! AUTHOR!"
This story has to do with two men and a play, instead of a woman, and it is none of mine. I had it from an old gentleman I love: only he ought to have written it himself. This, however, he will never do, having known intimately in his young days one of the two men concerned. But I have his leave to repeat the story more or less as he told it – if I can. And I am going to him for my rebuke – when I dare.
"You want to hear the story of poor old Pharazyn and his play? I'm not going to tell it you…
"Ah, well! My recollection of the matter dates from one summer's night at my old rooms in the Adelphi, when he spoilt my night's work by coming in flushed with an idea of his own. I remember banging the drawer into which I threw my papers to lock them away for the night; but in a few minutes I had forgotten my unfinished article, and was glad that Pharazyn had come. We were young writers, both of us; and, let me tell you, my good fellow, young writing wasn't in those days what it is now. I am thinking less of merit than of high prices, and less of high prices than of cheap notoriety. Neither of us had ever had our names before the public – not even in the bill of an unread and unreadable magazine. No one cared about names in my day, save for the half-dozen great ones that were then among us; so Pharazyn's and mine never got into the newspapers, though some of them used our stuff.
"In a manner we were rivals, for we were writing the same sort of thing for the same sort of publications, and that was how we had come together; but never was rivalry friendlier, or mutually more helpful. Our parts were strangely complementary: if I could understand for the life of me the secret of collaboration, I should say that I might have collaborated with Pharazyn almost ideally. I had the better of him in point of education, and would have turned single sentences against him for all he was worth; and I don't mind saying so, for there my superiority ended. When he had a story to tell he told it with a swing and impetus which I coveted him, as well I might to this day; and if he was oftener without anything to write about, his ideas would pay twenty shillings in the pound, in strength and originality, where mine made some contemptible composition in pence. That is why I have been a failure at fiction – oh, yes, I have! That is why Pharazyn would have succeeded, if only he had stuck to plain ordinary narrative prose.
"The idea he was unable to keep within his own breast, on the evening of which I am telling you, was as new, and simple, and dramatic as any that ever intoxicated the soul of story-teller or made a brother author green with envy. I can see him now, as I watched him that night, flinging to and fro with his quick, nervous stride, while he sketched the new story – bit by bit, and often the wrong bit foremost; but all with his own flashing vividness, which makes me so sorry – so sorry whenever I think of it. At moments he would stand still before the chair on which I sat intent, and beat one hand upon the other, and look down at me with a grand, wondering smile, as though he himself could hardly believe what the gods had put into his head, or that the gift was real gold, it glittered so at first sight. On that point I could reassure him. My open jealousy made me admire soberly. But when he told me, quite suddenly, as though on an afterthought, that he meant to make a play of it and not a story, I had the solid satisfaction at that moment of calling him a fool.
"The ordinary author of my day, you see, had a certain timorous respect for the technique of the stage. It never occurred to us to make light of those literary conventions which it was not our business to understand. We were behind you fellows in every way. But Pharazyn was a sort of forerunner: he said that any intelligent person could write a play, if he wanted to, and provided he could write at all. He said his story was a born play; and it was, in a way; but I told him I doubted whether he could train it up with his own hand into a good acting one. I knew I was right. He had neither the experience nor the innate constructive faculty, one or other of which is absolutely necessary for the writing of possible plays. I implored him to turn the thing into a good dramatic novel, and so make his mark at one blow. But no; the wilful fit was on him, and one had to let it run its course. Already he could see and hear his audience laughing and crying, so he said, and no doubt he had further visions of his weekly cheque. Anyhow, we sat up all night over it, arguing, smoking, and drinking whisky until my windows overlooking the river caught the rising sun at an angle. Then I gave in, for poor old Pharazyn was more obstinate than ever, though he thanked me with the greatest good temper for my well-meant advice.
"'And look here, my boy,' says he, as he puts on his hat, 'you shan't hear another word about this till the play's written; and you are to ask no questions. Is that a bargain? Very well, then. When I've finished it – down to the very last touches —you shall come and sit up all night with me, and I'll read you every word. And by George, old chap, if they give me a call the first night, and want a speech – and I see you sitting in your stall, like a blessed old fool as you are – by George, sir, I'll hold up you and your judgment to the ridicule of the house, so help me Himmel!'
"Well, I am coming to that first night presently. Meanwhile, for the next six months I saw very little of Pharazyn, and less still in the new year. He seldom came to my rooms now; when he did I could never get him to stay and sit up with me; and once when I climbed up to his garret (it was literally that) he would not answer me, though I could smell his pipe through the key-hole in which he'd turned the key. Yet he was perfectly friendly whenever we did meet. He said he was working very hard, and indeed I could imagine it; his personal appearance, never his strong point, being even untidier, not to say seedier, than of old. He continued to send me odd magazines in which his stuff happened to appear, or, occasionally a proof for one's opinion and suggestions; we had done this to each other all along; but either I did not think about it, or somehow he led me to suppose that his things were more or less hot from the pen, whereas many of mine had been written a twelve-month before one saw them in type. One way or another I gathered that he was at work in our common groove, and had shelved, for the present at all events, his proposed play, about which you will remember I had undertaken to ask no questions.
"I was quite mistaken. One night in the following March he came to me with a haggard face, a beaming eye, and a stout, clean manuscript, which he brought down with a thud on my desk. It was the play he had sketched out to me eight or nine months before. I was horrified to hear he had been at work upon it alone from that night to this. He actually boasted that he hadn't written another line in all that time, only each line of his play some ten times over.
"I recollect looking curiously at his shabby clothes, and then reminding him that it was at his place, not mine, I was to have heard him read the play: and how he confessed that he had no chair for me there – that his room was practically dismantled – that he had sacrificed everything to the play and would do so again. I was extremely angry. I could have helped him so easily, independent as I was of the calling I loved to follow. But there was about him always an accursed unnecessary independence, which has since struck me – and I think I may say so after all these years – as the mark of a rather humble, deadly honest origin.
"He read me the play, and I cried over the third act, and so did he. I thought then, and still think, that there was genius in that third act – it took you off your feet. And to me, certainly, it seemed as if the piece must act as well as it read, though indeed, as I took care to say and to repeat, my opinion was well-nigh valueless on that point. I only knew that I could see the thing playing itself, as I walked about the room (for this time I was the person who was too excited to sit still), and that was enough to make one sanguine. I became as enthusiastic about it as though the work were mine (which it never, never would or could have been), yet I was unable to suggest a single improvement, or to have so much as a finger-tip in the pie. Nor could I afterwards account for its invariable reception at the hands of managers, whose ways were then unknown to me. That night we talked only of one kind of reception. We were still talking when once more the sun came slanting up the river to my windows; you could hardly see them for tobacco-smoke, and this time we had emptied a bottle to the success of Pharazyn's piece.
"Oh, those nights – those nights once in a way! God forgive me, but I'd sacrifice many things to be young again and feel clever, and to know the man who would sit up all night with me to rule the world over a bottle of honest grog. In the light of after events I ought perhaps to be ashamed to recall such a night with that particular companion. But it is ridiculous, in my opinion, to fit some sort of consequence to every little solitary act; and I shall never admit that poor Pharazyn's ultimate failing was in any appreciable degree founded or promoted by those our youthful full-souled orgies. I know very well that afterwards, when his life was spent in waylaying those aforesaid managers, in cold passages, on stage doorsteps, or in desperation under the public portico on the street; and when a hundred snubs and subterfuges would culminate in the return of his manuscript, ragged but unread; I know, and I knew then, that the wreck who would dodge me in Fleet Street, or cut me in the Strand, had taken to his glass more seriously and more steadily than a man should. But I am not sure that it matters much —much, you understand me – when that man's heart is broken.
"The last words I was ever to exchange with my poor old friend ring in my head to this day, whenever I think of him; and I can repeat them every one. It was years after our intimacy had ceased, and when I only knew that he had degenerated into a Fleet Street loafer of the most dilapidated type, that I caught sight of him one day outside a theatre. It was the theatre which was for some years a gold-mine to one Morton Morrison, of whom you may never have heard; but he was a public pet in his day, and his day was just then at its high noon. Well, there stood Pharazyn, with his hands in his pockets and a cutty-pipe sticking out between his ragged beard and moustache, and his shoulders against the pit door, so that for once he could not escape me. But he wouldn't take a hand out of his pocket to shake mine; and when I asked him how he was, without thinking, he laughed in my face, and it made me feel cruel. He was dreadfully emaciated and almost in rags. And as I wondered what I ought to do, and what to say next, he gave a cough, and spat upon the pavement, and I could see the blood.
"I don't know what you would have done for him, but for all I knew what had brought him to this, I could think of nothing but a drink. It was mid-winter, and I tell you the man was in rags. I felt that if I could get him to a bar he might eat something, too, and that I should lay such a hold of him this time as I need never again let go. Judge of my surprise when he flatly refused to come with me even for a drink.
"'Can't you see?' he said in his hollow voice. 'There'll be a crowd here directly, and I want the best seat in the pit – the best in the house. I've been going dry for it these two days, and I'm going dry till I've seen the piece. No, I've been here an hour already, and I'm still the first; but I mightn't be when I came back, and I'm not going to risk it, thanks all the same.'
"By this I had remembered that Morton Morrison was to re-open that night with a new piece. Indeed, I ought not to have forgotten that, seeing that I had my order about me somewhere, and it meant a column from my pen between twelve and one in the morning. But this sudden sorry meeting had put all other thoughts out of my head.
"'My dear fellow,' I said, with a sort of laugh, 'are you a first-nighter, too?'
"'Only at this theatre.'
"He looked me queerly in the face.
"'You admire Morrison as much as all that?'
"'I love him!'
"I suppose my eyes thawed him, though God knows how hard I was trying not to hurt him with pitying looks. At all events he began to explain himself of his own accord, in one bitter, swift, impetuous outburst.
"'Look here,' he said, with his hoarse voice lowered: 'I hoped never to see your face again. I hoped you'd never see mine. But now you are here, don't go this minute, and I'll tell you why I think so much of Morton Morrison. I don't know him, mind you – he doesn't know me from Adam – but once long ago I had something to do with him. And God bless him, but damn every other manager in London, for he was the only one of the lot to give me a civil hearing and a kind word!'
"I knew what he was talking about, and he knew that I knew, for we had understood one another in the old days.
"'I took it to him last of all,' he went on, wiping his damp lips with his hand. 'When I began hawking it about he was an unknown man; when his turn came he was here. He let me read it to him. Then he asked me to leave it with him for a week; and when I went back to him, he said what they'd all said – that it would never act. But Morton Morrison said it nicely. And when he saw how it cut me up into little bits, he got me to tell him all about everything; and then he persuaded me to burn the play, instead of ruining my life for it; and I burnt it in his dressing-room fire, but the ruin was too far gone to mend. I wrote that thing with my heart's blood – old man, you know I did! And none of them would think of it – my God! But Morrison was good about it – he's a good soul – and that's why you'll see me at every first night of his until the drink does me.'
"I had not followed him quite to the end. One thing had amazed me too much.
"'You burnt your play,' I could only murmur, 'when it would have turned into such a novel! Surely you have some draft of it still?'
"'I burnt the lot when I got home,' says Pharazyn, 'and before long I shall join 'em and burn too.'
"I had nothing to answer to that, and was, besides, tenacious of my point. 'I don't think much of the kindness that makes one man persuade another to burn his work and throw up the sponge,' I said, with a good deal of indignation, for I did feel wroth with that fellow Morrison – a bread-and-butter drawing-room actor whose very vogue used to irritate me.
"'Then what do you think of this?' asked Pharazyn, as he dipped a hand within his shabby coat, and cautiously unclenched it under my nose.
"'It's a five-pound note.'
"'I know; but wasn't that kind, then?'
"'So Morrison gave you this!' I said.
"Two or three persons had stopped to join us at the pit door, and Pharazyn hastily put the note back in his pocket. As he did so, his dreadfully shabby condition gave my heart a fresh cut.
"'Are you never going to spend that?' I asked in a whisper; and in a whisper he answered, 'Never. It's all my play has brought me – all. It was given me as a charity, but I took it as my earnings – my earnings for all the work and waiting, and flesh and blood and self-respect, that one thing cost me. Spend it? Not I. It will bury me as decently as I deserve.'