The editor of Every Evening gave Ray his manuscript back. He had evidently no expectation that Ray could have any personal feeling about it, or could view it apart from the interests of the paper. He himself betrayed no personal feeling where the paper was concerned, and he probably could have conceived of none in Ray.
“I don’t think it will do for us,” he said. “It is a good story, and I read it all through, but I don’t believe it would succeed as a serial. What do you think, yourself?”
“I?” said Ray. “How could I have an unprejudiced opinion?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You know what we want; we’ve talked it over enough; and you ought to know whether this is the kind of thing. Anyhow, it’s within your province to decide. I don’t think it will do, but if you think it will, I’m satisfied. You must take the responsibility. I leave it to you, and I mean business.”
Ray thought how old Kane would be amused if he could know of the situation, how he would inspect and comment it from every side, and try to get novel phrases for it. He believed himself that no author{301} had ever been quite in his place before; it was like something in Gilbert’s operas; it was as if a prisoner were invited to try himself and pronounce his own penalty. His chief seemed to see no joke in the affair; he remained soberly and somewhat severely waiting for Ray’s decision.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Ray. “I don’t think it would do for Every Evening. Even if it would, I should doubt the taste of working in something of my own on the reader at the beginning.”
“I shouldn’t care for that,” said the chief, “if it were the thing.”
Ray winced, but the chief did not see it. Now, as always, it was merely and simply a question of the paper. He added carelessly:
“I should think such a story as that would succeed as a book.”
“I wish you would get some publisher to think so.”
The chief had nothing to say to that. He opened his desk and began to write.
In spite of the rejected manuscript lying on the table before him, Ray made out a very fair day’s work himself, and then he took it up town with him. He did not go at once to his hotel, but pushed on as far as Chapley’s, where he hoped to see Peace before she went home, and ask how her father was getting on; he had not visited Hughes for several weeks; he made himself this excuse. What he really wished was to confront the girl and divine her thoughts concerning himself. He must do that, now; but if it were not{302} for the cruelty of forsaking the old man, it might be the kindest and best thing never to go near any of them again.
He had the temporary relief of finding her gone home when he reached Chapley’s. Mr. Brandreth was there, and he welcomed Ray with something more than his usual cordiality.
“Look here,” he said, shutting the door of his little room. “Have you got that story of yours where you could put your hand on it easily?”
“I can put my hand on it instantly,” said Ray, and he touched it.
“Oh!” Mr. Brandreth returned, a little daunted. “I didn’t know you carried it around with you.”
“I don’t usually—or only when I’ve got it from some publisher who doesn’t want it.”
“I thought it had been the rounds,” said Mr. Brandreth, still uneasily.
“Oh, it’s an editor, this time. It’s just been offered to me for serial use in Every Evening, and I’ve declined it.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Brandreth smiled in mystification.
“Exactly what I say.” Ray explained the affair as it had occurred. “It makes me feel like Brutus and the son of Brutus rolled into one. I’m going round to old Kane, to give the facts away to him. I think he’ll enjoy them.”
“Well! Hold on! What did the chief say about it?{303}”
“Oh, he liked it. Everybody likes it, but nobody wants it. He said he thought it would succeed as a book. The editors all think that. The publishers think it would succeed as a serial.”
Ray carried it off buoyantly, and enjoyed the sort of daze Mr. Brandreth was in.
“See here,” said the publisher, “I want you to leave that manuscript with me.”
“Again?”
“Yes. I’ve never read it myself yet, you know.”
“Take it and be happy!” Ray bestowed it upon him with dramatic effusion.
“No, seriously!” said Mr. Brandreth. “I want to talk with you. Sit down, won’t you? You know the first time you were in here, I told you I was anxious to get Chapley & Co. in line as a publishing house again; I didn’t like the way we were dropping out and turning into mere jobbers. You remember.”
Ray nodded.
“Well, sir, I’ve never lost sight of that idea, and I’ve been keeping one eye out for a good novel, to start with, ever since. I haven’t found it, I don’t mind telling you. You see, all the established reputations are in the hands of other publishers, and you can’t get them away without paying ridiculous money, and violating the comity of the trade at the same time. If we are to start new, we must start with a new man.”
“I don’t know whether I’m a new man or not,” said Ray, “if you’re working up to me. Sometimes I{304} feel like a pretty old one. I think I came to New York about the beginning of the Christian era. But A Modern Romeo is as fresh as ever. It has the dew of the morning on it still—rubbed off in spots by the nose of the professional smeller.”
“Well,” said Mr. Brandreth, “it’s new enough for all practical purposes. I want you to let me take it home with me.”
“Which of the leading orchestras would you like to have accompany you to your door?” asked Ray.
“No, no! Don’t expect too much!” Mr. Brandreth entreated.
“I don’t expect anything,” Ray protested.
“Well, that’s right—that’s the only business basis. But if it should happen to be the thing, I don’t believe you’d be personally any happier about it than I should.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“I’m not a fatalist”—
“But it would look a good deal like fatalism.”
“Yes, it would. It would look as if it were really intended to be, if it came back to us now, after it had been round to everybody else.”
“Yes; but if it was fated from the beginning, I don’t see why you didn’t take it in the beginning. I should rather wonder what all the bother had been for.”
“You might say that,” Mr. Brandreth admitted.
Ray went off on the wave of potential prosperity, and got Kane to come out and dine with him. They{305} decided upon Martin’s, where the dinner cost twice as much as at Ray’s hotel, and had more the air of being a fine dinner; and they got a table in the corner, and Ray ordered a bottle of champagne.
“Yes,” said Kane, “that is the right drink for a man who wishes to spend his money before he has got it. It’s the true gambler’s beverage.”
“You needn’t drink it,” said Ray. “You shall have the vin ordinaire that’s included in the price of the dinner.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a glass of champagne now and then, after I’ve brought my host under condemnation for ordering it,” said Kane.
“And I want to let my heart out to-night,” Ray pursued. “I may not have the chance to-morrow. Besides, as to the gambling, it isn’t I betting on my book; it’s Brandreth. I don’t understand yet why he wants to do it. To be sure, it isn’t a great risk he’s taking.”
“I rather think he has to take some risks just now,” said Kane, significantly. He lowered his soft voice an octave as he went on. “I’m afraid that poor Henry, in his pursuit of personal perfectability, has let things get rather behindhand in his business. I don’t blame him—you know I never blame people—for there is always a question as to which is the cause and which is the effect in such matters. My dear old friend may have begun to let his business go to the bad because he had got interested in his soul, or he may have turned to his soul for refuge because he knew his{306} business had begun to go to the bad. At any rate, he seems to have found the usual difficulty in serving God and Mammon; only, in this case Mammon has got the worst of it, for once: I suppose one ought to be glad of that. But the fact is that Henry has lost heart in business; he doesn’t respect business; he has a bad conscience; he wants to be out of it. I had a long talk with him before he went into the country, and I couldn’t help pitying him. I don’t think his wife and daughter even will ever get him back to New York. He knows it’s rather selfish to condemn them to the dulness of a country life, and that it’s rather selfish to leave young Brandreth to take the brunt of affairs here alone. But what are you to do in a world like this, where a man can’t get rid of one bad conscience without laying in another?”
In his pleasure with his paradox Kane suffered Ray to fill up his glass a second time. Then he looked dissatisfied, and Ray divined the cause. “Did you word that quite to your mind?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s too diffuse. Suppose we say that in our conditions no man can do right without doing harm?”
“That’s more succinct,” said Ray. “Is it known at all that they’re in difficulties?”
Kane smoothly ignored the question. “I fancy that the wrong is in Henry’s desire to cut himself loose from the ties that bind us all together here. Poor David has the right of that. We must stand or fall together in the pass we’ve come to; and we cannot{307} helpfully eschew the world except by remaining in it.” He took up Ray’s question after a moment’s pause. “No, it isn’t known that they’re in difficulties, and I don’t say that it’s so. Their affairs have simply been allowed to run down, and Henry has left Brandreth to gather them up single-handed. I don’t know that Brandreth will complain. It leaves him unhampered, even if he can do nothing with his hands but clutch at straws.”
“Such straws as the Modern Romeo?” Ray asked. “It seems to me that I have a case of conscience here. Is it right for me to let Mr. Brandreth bet his money on my book when there are so many chances of his losing?”
“Let us hope he won’t finally bet,” Kane suggested, and he smiled at the refusal which instantly came into Ray’s eyes. “But if he does, we must leave the end with God. People,” he mused on, “used to leave the end with God a great deal oftener than they do now. I remember that I did, myself, once. It was easier. I think I will go back to it. There is something very curious in our relation to the divine. God is where we believe He is, and He is a daily Providence or not, as we choose. People used to see His hand in a corner, or a deal, which prospered them, though it ruined others. They may be ashamed to do that now. But we might get back to faith by taking a wider sweep and seeing God in our personal disadvantages—finding Him not only in luck but in bad luck. Chance may be a larger law, with an orbit far transcending the{308} range of the little statutes by which fire always burns, and water always finds its level.”
“That is a better Hard Saying than the other,” Ray mocked. “‘I’ faith an excellent song.’ Have some more champagne. Now go on; but let us talk of A Modern Romeo.”
“We will drink to it,” said Kane, with an air of piety.{309}