A Black Adonis Part 20

Roseleaf took rooms at his old lodgings in the city, and set in earnest about the work of beginning his great novel. He had interviews with Mr.

Gouger, at which he detailed the slight thread of plot which he already had in mind, profiting by the critic's shrewd suggestions. It was decided that he should portray, at the beginning, a youth much like himself, who was to fall in love with an angelically pure maiden. The outline of their respective characters were to be sketched with care, and sundry obstacles to their union were to be developed as the story progressed. Gouger warned his young friend not to write too fast, and to content himself for the present with delineating the phase of love with which he had become familiar.

"Later on," he said, "when your hero finds that this girl is not all his bright fancy painted her--when it is proved beyond a doubt that she has played him false, that she has another lover--"

Roseleaf turned pale.

"But that will never be!" he interrupted.

"It will, of course--in the story," corrected Gouger. "She will lead him a race that will make him an enemy to the entire s.e.x, if she is used for all the dramatic effect possible. People expect to find immaculate purity in the earlier chapters of a story, as they do in small children.

With the progress of the action they look for something more exciting.

To sketch a seraph who remains one would only be to repeat the failure you made in your other effort--the one you brought to me the day I met you first. It is not the glory of heaven that attracts audiences to our churches, but the dramatic quality of h.e.l.l. A sermon without a large spice of the devil in it would be much worse than a rendition of Hamlet minus the Prince. Put your heroine in the clouds, if you will, at the beginning. The higher she goes, the greater will be her fall, and the greater, consequently, your triumph."

The young novelist shivered as he listened to these expressions. How could he build a heroine on the model of Daisy Fern, and conceive the possibility that she would ever allow her white robes to touch the earth? He might have constructed such a plot with Millicent as the central figure, though that would be by no means easy; but Daisy!

Impossible! He asked the critic if it would not do to send the hero of the tale to perdition, while leaving his sweetheart immaculate to the close.

"No," said Gouger, decidedly. "A man's fall is not much of a fall, any way you put it. The public is not interested in such matters. It demands a female sacrifice, like some of the ancient G.o.ds, and it will not be appeased with less. I expect you to be new and original in your treatment of the theme, but the subject itself is as old as fiction. You have too little imagination, as I have told you before. You must cultivate that talent. Having conceived your paragon, imagine her placed under temptations she cannot resist; surround her with an environment from which she cannot break; place her in situations that leave her no escape."

Roseleaf shook his head.

"I am afraid I never shall be able to do it," he said.

"Pshaw! Don't talk of failure at this stage of the game. All you have to do is to introduce upon the scene a thoroughly unprincipled man of good address, who is fertile in expedients. You will find your model for that among a dozen of your acquaintances. Why, take Archie Weil, and hold him in your mind till you are saturated with him."

What did Mr. Gouger mean? That Mr. Weil would actually do these dreadful things, would in his own person perpetrate the outrage of winning a pure girl to shame. It seemed childish to ask such a question, and yet such a meaning could easily be taken from what the critic had said. No, no! All he could have meant was that Mr. Weil might serve as a figure on which to lay these sins--that he could be carried in the writer's mind, as a costumer uses a stuffed frame to hang garments on while in the process of manufacture.

"Then there is Boggs," added Gouger, with a laugh. "You ought to find some place for a fellow like him, if only for the comic parts of your novel, and there must be a little humor in a book that is to suit the ma.s.s. A writer for a magazine said recently with much truth, 'He who would hit the popular taste must aim low.' I think Boggs could furnish the cheap fun for an ordinary novel, without too great a wear on the writer. Go ahead, my boy. Write a half dozen chapters in your own idyllic way, and then get Archie to take you to a few places where your mind will be turned to opposite scenes. It takes all sorts of edibles to suit the modern palate."

So Roseleaf wrote, slowly, patiently, with devotion to his art, until he had completed five chapters of his story. And Gouger read it and went into ecstacies, declaring it the best foundation he had ever seen for a most entrancing romance.

"He has wrought his people up to such a superlative height," said the critic to Mr. Weil, "that the _chute_ will be simply tremendous! How simply, how elegantly his sentences flow! If he can handle the necessary wickedness that must follow, the sale of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' or 'Thou Shalt Not,' will be eclipsed without the least doubt. But, the question still is, _can_ he?"

"There's no such question," was the response. "He must, that's the way to put it. Confound it, he shall! And the next thing for him to do is to take a few visits with me to the underground regions, where he can get such slight shocks to his literary system as will enable him to take up the vein he must work."

During this time Roseleaf did not forget the invitation he had received to dine with the Ferns. It did him good to see Daisy, although he could not now get her for a moment to himself. He sighed to her over the table, and across the parlor, after the party had retired to that part of the house, and she answered him with little bright smiles that acted like an emollient on his hurt spirit. He had never found the courage to beard her father in his den--of wool--and was not even sure that the affair had reached a stage where anything could be gained by taking such a step. What he wanted was a word of a.s.surance from Daisy that she would wait for him till he had made a Name in literature, or proved his ability in some definite manner. There was no indication that any one else was in the way; everything pointed to a contrary probability. But there is nothing so desolate as the heart of a lover whose fair one is just beyond his reach.

Mr. Weil accompanied Shirley on most of these visits, and knew very well what was going on. None of the glances exchanged between the young people were so much their exclusive property as they believed. Had Archie possessed eyes in the back and sides of his head, he could have seen little more than he did. While appearing to devote his entire attention to Mr. Fern and Millicent--princ.i.p.ally the former, he found time to watch Roseleaf and Daisy, and even the negro Hannibal.

He noticed that the servant was no less devoted than formerly to the youngest member of the household. He saw him hover around her at the table like a protecting spirit, letting her want for nothing that thoughtfulness could procure. And he noticed that Daisy seemed as oblivious of this as she had always been. She accepted these extraordinary attentions quite as if Hannibal were some automaton, acting with a set of concealed springs--a mechanism in which there was nothing of human life or intelligence.

Mr. Fern was the same gentlemanly host as of yore, with the same dark cloud hanging over him, whatever might be its cause. Courteous by nature to an exceptional degree he could not a.s.sume a gayety he did not feel.

There was some terrible weight bearing him down, some awful incubus of which he was unable to rid himself. The only person who did not notice it was Millicent, and the one it troubled most was Daisy, on whose sweet young face the share she had in her parent's griefs had already begun to leave its impressions.

Millicent's novel was soon placed in Mr. Gouger's hands, completed. The original theme was unaltered, but in its new garb of perfect English no one would have recognized the rejected work. The combination of the girl's strength of mind and the man's elegance of diction was successful. The critic recommended its acceptance without a word of dissent, and Cutt & Slashem even consented, on his suggestion, to forego the guarantee against loss which they had of late demanded from all authors whose names were unknown to the reading public.

"I have fixed it for you, Archie," he said, when that gentleman next made his appearance at the sanctum. "No deposit or guarantee, and ten per cent. of the retail price for royalty. So take a train to your inamorata's house and tell her the news."

Mr. Weil did not seem to wholly relish the announcement.

"In the first place," he remarked, "you have no business to speak of Miss Fern as my inamorata; and in the second you will pay her more than ten per cent. or you won't get the book to print."

At this, Mr. Gouger, after the manner of all publishers and their agents, proceeded to show to Mr. Weil that it was perfectly impossible to pay another cent more than the figure he had named; and before he had finished he agreed to see the firm and get the amount raised considerably, provided the sales should exceed five thousand copies. In short, Mr. Weil secured a very respectable contract for a new author, and one that was sure to please Miss Fern, if she was in the least degree reasonable.

"I wish you would hurry up Roseleaf," remarked Gouger, when this matter was disposed of. "When will you take him down into the depths and let him see that side of life?"

"I have arranged a journey for to-morrow night," said Weil. "We shall go to Isaac Leveson's and make an evening of it. Unless things are different there from usual, he will lay the foundation for all the wickedness he needs to put into his story."

The critic nodded approval.

"He will probably have a Jew in it, then--a modernized f.a.gan."

"Yes," said Weil. "And a negro. A tall, well-built negro, who has a white man for his slave!"

CHAPTER XII.

DINING AT ISAAC'S.

On the following day, when Shirley Roseleaf presented himself at the Hoffman House, he found Mr. Weil awaiting him in a state of great good nature.

"Go home and make yourself ready for a dive into the infernal regions,"

he said, merrily. "I am going to take you to a place where the devil spends his vacation, and show you a set of women as different from those you have lately met as chalk is from indigo. Be here at nine o'clock this evening, prepared for the descent."

A vision of subterranean pa.s.sages crossed the mind of the listener, and he thought of tall boots and a tarpaulin.

"How shall I dress--roughly, I suppose?" he inquired.

"Certainly not. Put on your swallow tail, and white tie. Vice in these days wears its best garments. You cannot tell a gambler from a clergyman by his attire. Dress exactly as if you were going to the swellest party on Fifth Avenue. The only addition to your toilet will be a revolver, if you happen to have one handy. If you do not, I have several and will lend you one."

If he expected to startle the young man he was in error. Roseleaf merely nodded and said he would take one of the weapons owned by Mr. Weil.

"We shall not use them--there are a thousand chances to one," said Archie. "New York is like Montana. You remember what the resident said to the tenderfoot, 'You may be a long time without wantin' a we'p'n in these parts, but when you do you'll want it d--d sudden.'"

When Roseleaf returned, the hands of his watch indicated the time at which he had been asked to make his appearance, but Mr. Weil did not take him immediately to the point of destination. Instead he walked over to a variety theatre that was then in operation on Twenty-third street, and after spending a short time in the auditorium guided the young man into the "wineroom." Here the ladies of the ballet were in the habit of going when off the stage, for the sake of entertaining the patrons with their light and frivolous conversation, and inducing them if possible, to invest in champagne at five dollars the bottle.

Archie was, it appeared, not unknown to the throng that filled this place, for his name was spoken by several of both s.e.xes as soon as he entered. He nodded coolly to those who addressed him, and took a seat at a table with his companion. With a shake of his head he declined the offers of two or three fairies of the ballet to share the table, and ordered a bottle of Mumm with the evident intention of drinking it alone with his friend.

Roseleaf slowly sipped the sparkling beverage. He was cautioned in a whisper to drink but one gla.s.s, as it was necessary that he should keep a perfectly clear head. Weil remarked in an undertone that he had only ordered the wine as an excuse for remaining a few minutes.

"I call this 'the slaughter house,'" he added, in a voice still lower.

"Girls are brought here to be murdered. Not to have their throats cut,"

he explained, "but to be killed just as surely, if more slowly. I have seen them come here for the first time, with good health shining out of their rosy cheeks, delighted at the unwonted excitement and the amount of attention the frequenters of the place bestowed. I have watched them growing steadily paler, having recourse to rouge, the eyes getting dimmer, the voice growing harsher, the temper becoming more variable.

And then--other fresh faces came in their stead. There are killed, on an average, twenty girls a year here, I should say; killed to satisfy the appet.i.tes of men, as beeves are killed in Chicago, but not so mercifully."

The novelist looked into the faces that were nearest to him and thought he could discern the various grades of which his friend spoke--the new, the older, the ones whose turn to give way to others would soon come.

All of them were drinking. Most had on the stage dresses they had just worn or were about to wear in the performance. Some had finished their parts and were enveloped in street clothes, ready to take their departure with the first male who asked them. And they were drinking, drinking, either in little sips or in feverish gulps, as they would at a later day, when the five-dollar wine would be replaced by five cent beer or perhaps the drainings of a keg on the sidewalk.