Ray went home ill at ease with himself. He spent a bad night, and he seemed to have sunk away only a moment from his troubles, when a knock at his door brought him up again into the midst of them. He realized them before he realized the knock sufficiently to call out, “Who’s there?”
“Oh!” said Mr. Brandreth’s voice without; “you’re not up yet! Can I come in?”
“Certainly,” said Ray, and he leaned forward and slid back the bolt of his door: it was one advantage of a room so small that he could do this without getting out of bed.
Mr. Brandreth seemed to beam with one radiance from his silk hat, his collar, his boots, his scarf, his shining eyes and smooth-shaven friendly face, as he entered.
“Of course,” he said, “you haven’t seen the Metropolis yet?”
“No; what is the matter with the Metropolis?”
Mr. Brandreth, with his perfectly fitted gloves on, and his natty cane dangling from his wrist, unfolded the supplement of the newspaper, and accurately folded it again to the lines of the first three columns{347} of the page. Then he handed it to Ray, and delicately turned away and looked out of the window.
Ray glanced at the space defined, and saw that it was occupied by a review of A Modern Romeo. There were lengths of large open type for the reviewer’s introduction and comments and conclusion, and embedded among these, in closer and finer print, extracts from the novel, where Ray saw his own language transfigured and glorified.
The critic struck in the beginning a note which he sounded throughout; a cry of relief, of exultation, at what was apparently the beginning of a new order of things in fiction. He hailed the unknown writer of A Modern Romeo as the champion of the imaginative and the ideal against the photographic and the commonplace, and he expressed a pious joy in the novel as a bold advance in the path that was to lead forever away from the slough of realism. But he put on a philosophic air in making the reader observe that it was not absolutely a new departure, a break, a schism; it was a natural and scientific evolution, it was a development of the spiritual from the material; the essential part of realism was there, but freed from the grossness, the dulness of realism as we had hitherto known it, and imbued with a fresh life. He called attention to the firmness and fineness with which the situation was portrayed and the characters studied before the imagination began to deal with them; and then he asked the reader to notice how, when this foundation had once been laid, it was made to serve as a “star-ypoint{348}ing pyramid” from which the author’s fancy took its bold flight through realms untravelled by the photographic and the commonplace. He praised the style of the book, which he said corresponded to the dual nature of the conception, and recalled Thackeray in the treatment of persons and things, and Hawthorne in the handling of motives and ideas. There was, in fact, so much subtlety in the author’s dealing with these, that one might almost suspect a feminine touch, but for the free and virile strength shown in the passages of passion and action.
The reviewer quoted several of such passages, and Ray followed with a novel intensity of interest the words he already knew by heart. The whole episode of throwing the cousin over the cliff was reprinted; but the parts which the reviewer gave the largest room and the loudest praise were those embodying the incidents of the hypnotic trance and the tragical close of the story. Here, he said, was a piece of the most palpitant actuality, and he applauded it as an instance of how the imagination might deal with actuality. Nothing in the whole range of commonplace, photographic, realistic fiction was of such striking effect as this employment of a scientific discovery in the region of the ideal. He contended that whatever lingering doubt people might have of the usefulness of hypnotism as a remedial agent, there could be no question of the splendid success with which the writer of this remarkable novel had turned it to account in poetic fiction of a very high grade. He did not say the highest grade;{349} the book had many obvious faults. It was evidently the first book of a young writer, whose experience of life had apparently been limited to a narrow and comparatively obscure field. It was in a certain sense provincial, even parochial; but perhaps the very want of an extended horizon had concentrated the author’s thoughts the more penetratingly on the life immediately at hand. What was important was that he had seen this life with the vision of an idealist, and had discerned its poetic uses with the sense of the born artist, and had set it in
“The light that never was on sea or land.”Much more followed to like effect, and the reviewer closed with a promise to look with interest for the future performance of a writer who had already given much more than the promise of mastery; who had given proofs of it. His novel might not be the great American novel which we had so long been expecting, but it was a most notable achievement in the right direction. The author was the prophet of better things; he was a Moses, who, if we followed him, would lead us up from the flesh-pots of Realism toward the promised land of the Ideal.
From time to time Ray made a little apologetic show of not meaning to do more than glance the review over, but Mr. Brandreth insisted upon his taking his time and reading it all; he wanted to talk to him about it. He began to talk before Ray finished; in fact he agonized him with question and comment, all through;{350} and when Ray laid the paper down at last, he came and sat on the edge of his bed.
“Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I don’t believe in working on Sunday, and that sort of thing; but I believe this is providential. My wife does, too; she says it’s a reward for the faith we’ve had in the book; and that it would be a sin to lose a moment’s time. If there is to be any catch-on at all, it must be instantaneous; we mustn’t let the effect of this review get cold, and I’m going to strike while it’s red-hot.” The word seem to suggest the magnitude of the purpose which Mr. Brandreth expressed with seriousness that befitted the day. “I’m simply going to paint the universe red. You’ll see.”
“Well, well,” said Ray, “you’d better not tell me how. I guess I’ve got as much as I can stand, now.”
“If that book doesn’t succeed,” said Mr. Brandreth, as solemnly as if registering a vow, “it won’t be my fault.”
He went away, and Ray passed into a trance such as wraps a fortunate lover from the outer world. But nothing was further from his thoughts than love. The passion that possessed him was egotism flattered to an intensity in which he had no life but in the sense of himself. No experience could be more unwholesome while it lasted, but a condition so intense could not endure. His first impulse was to keep away from every one who could keep him from the voluptuous sense of his own success. He knew very well that the review in the Metropolis overrated his book, but he{351} liked it to be overrated; he wilfully renewed his delirium from it by reading it again and again, over his breakfast, on the train to the Park, and in the lonely places which he sought out there apart from all who could know him or distract him from himself. At first it seemed impossible; at last it became unintelligible. He threw the paper into some bushes; then after he had got a long way off, he went back and recovered it, and read the review once more. The sense had returned, the praises had relumed their fires; again he bathed his spirit in their splendor. It was he, he, he, of whom those things were said. He tried to realize it. Who was he? The question scared him; perhaps he was going out of his mind. At any rate he must get away from himself now; that was his only safety. He thought whom he should turn to for refuge. There were still people of his society acquaintance in town, and he could have had a cup of tea poured for him by a charming girl at any one of a dozen friendly houses. There were young men, more than enough of them, who would have welcomed him to their bachelor quarters. There was old Kane. But they would have all begun to talk to him about that review; Peace herself would have done so. He ended by going home, and setting to work on some notices for the next day’s Every Evening. The performance was a play of double consciousness in which he struggled with himself as if with some alien personality. But the next day he could take the time to pay Mr. Brandreth a visit without wronging the work he had carried so far.{352}
On the way he bought the leading morning papers, and saw that the publisher had reprinted long extracts from the Metropolis review as advertisements in the type of the editorial page; in the Metropolis itself he reprinted the whole review. “This sort of thing will be in the principal Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis papers just as soon as the mail can carry them my copy. I had thought of telegraphing the advertisement, but it will cost money enough as it is,” said Mr. Brandreth.
“Are you sure you’re not throwing your money away?” Ray asked, somewhat aghast.
“I’m sure I’m not throwing my chance away,” the publisher retorted with gay courage. He developed the plan of campaign as he had conceived it, and Ray listened with a kind of nerveless avidity. He looked over at Mr. Chapley’s room, where he knew that Peace was busily writing, and he hoped that she did not know that he was there. His last talk with her had mixed itself up with the intense experience that had followed, and seemed of one frantic quality with it. He walked out to the street door with Mr. Brandreth beside him, and did not turn for a glimpse of her.
“Oh by-the-way,” said the publisher at parting, “if you’d been here a little sooner, I could have made you acquainted with your reviewer. He dropped in a little while ago to ask who S. Ray was, and I did my best to make him believe it was a real name. I don’t think he was more than half convinced.{353}”
“I don’t more than half believe in him,” said Ray, lightly, to cover his disappointment. “Who is he?”
“Well, their regular man is off on sick leave, and this young fellow—Worrell is his name—is a sort of under study. He was telling me how he happened to go in for your book—those things are always interesting. He meant to take another book up to his house with him, and he found he had yours when he got home, and some things about hypnotism. He went through them, and then he thought he would just glance at yours, anyway, and he opened on the hypnotic trance scene, just when his mind was full of the subject, and he couldn’t let go. He went back to the beginning and read it all through, and then he gave you the benefit of the other fellow’s chance. He wanted to see you, when I told him about you. Curious how these things fall out, half the time?”
“Very,” said Ray, rather blankly.
“I knew you’d enjoy it.”
“Oh, I do.{354}”