A Daughter of To-Day Part 18

And he looked at his visitor with some curiosity. It was a queer article to have come through Lawrence Cardiff.

Cardiff resented the look more than the rejection. "It's of no consequence, thanks," he said drily. "Very good of you to look at it. But you print a great deal worse stuff, you know."

His private reflection was different, however, and led him to devote the following evening to making certain additions to the sense and alterations in the style of Elfrida's views on "The Nemesis of Romanticism," which enabled him to say, at about one o'clock in the morning, "_Enfin!_ It is pa.s.sable!" He took it to Elfrida on his way from his lecture next day. She met him at the door of her attic with expectant eyes; she was certain of success.

"Have they taken it?" she cried. "Tell me quick, quick!"

When he said no--the editor of the _London Magazine_ had shown himself an idiot--he was very sorry, but they would try again, he thought she was going to cry. But her face changed as he went on, telling her frankly what he thought, and showing her what he had done.

"I've' only improved it for the benefit of the Philistines,"

he said apathetically. "I hope you will forgive me."

"And now," she said at last, with a little hard air, "what do you propose?"

"I propose that if you approve these trifling alterations, we send the article to the _British Review_. And they are certain to take it."

Elfrida held out her hand for the ma.n.u.script, and he gave it to her. She looked at every page again. It was at least half re-written in Cardiff's small, cramped hand.

"Thank-you," she said slowly. "Thank-you very much. I have learned a great deal, I think, from what you have been kind enough to tell me, and to write here. But this, of course, so far as I am concerned in it, is a failure."

"Oh no!" he protested.

"An utter failure," she went on unnoticingly, "and it has served its purpose. There!" she cried with sudden pa.s.sion, and in an instant the ma.n.u.script was flaming in the grate.

"Please--please go away," she sobbed, leaning the mantel in a sudden betrayal of tears; Cardiff, resisting the temptation to take her in his arms and bid her be comforted, went.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Mr. Rattray's proposal occurred as soon after the close of the season as he was able to find time to devote the amount of attention to it which he felt it required. He put it off deliberately till then, fearing that it might entail a degree of mental agitation on his part that would have an undesirable reflex action upon the paper.

Mr. Rattray had never been really attracted toward matrimony before, although he had taken, in a discussion in the columns of the _Age_ upon the careworn query, "Is Marriage a Failure?" a vigorous negative side under various pen-names which argued not only inclination, but experience. He felt, therefore, that he could not possibly predicate anything of himself under the circ.u.mstances, and that it would be distinctly the part of wisdom to wait until there was less going on. Mr. Rattray had an indefinite idea that in case of a rejection he might find it necessary to go out of town for some weeks to pull himself together again--it was the traditional course--and if such an exigency occurred before July the office would go to pieces under the pressure of events. So he waited, becoming every day more enthusiastically aware of the great advantage of having Miss Bell permanently connected with the paper under supervision which would be even more highly authorized than an editor's, and growing at the same time more thoroughly impressed with the unusual character of her personal charm. Elfrida was a "find" to Mr. Arthur Rattray from a newspaper point of view--a find he gave himself credit for sagaciously recognizing, and one which it would be expedient to obtain complete possession of before its market value should become known.

And it was hardly possible for Mr. Rattray to divest himself of the newspaper point of view in the consideration of anything which concerned him personally. It struck him as uniquely fortunate that his own advantage and that of the _Age_ should tally, as it undoubtedly might in this instance; and that, for Arthur Rattray, was putting the matter in a rather high, almost disinterested connection.

It is doubtful whether to this day Mr. Rattray fully understands his rejection, it was done so deftly, so frankly, yet with such a delicate consideration for his feelings. He took it, he a.s.sured himself afterward, without winking; but it is unlikely that he felt sufficiently indebted to the manner of its administration, in congratulating himself upon this point. It may be, too, that he left Miss Bell with the impression that her intention never to marry was not an immovable one, given indefinite time and indefinite abstention, on his part, from alluding to the subject. Certainly he found himself surprisingly little cast down by the event, and more resolved than ever to make the editor-in-chief admit that Elfrida's contributions were "the brightest things in the paper," and act accordingly. He realized, in the course of time, that he had never been very confident of any other answer; but nothing is more certain than that it acted as a curious stimulus to his interest in Elfrida's work. He found a co-enthusiast in Golightly Ticke, and on more than one occasion they agreed that something, must be done to bring Miss Bell before the public, to put within her reach the opportunity of the success she deserved, which was of the order Mr. Rattray described as "screaming."

"So far as the booming is concerned," said Mr. Rattray to Mr. Ticke, "I will attend to that; but there must be something to boom. We can't sound the loud tocsin on a lot of our own paras. She must do something that will go between two covers."

The men were talking in Golightly's room over easeful Sunday afternoon cigars; and as Rattray spoke they heard a light step mount the stairs. "There she is now,"

replied Ticke. "Suppose we go up and propose it to her?"

"I wish I knew what to suggest," Rattray returned; "but we might talk it over with her--when she's had time to take off her bonnet."

Ten minutes later Elfrida was laughing at their ambitions.

"A success?" she exclaimed. "Oh yes! I mean to have a success--one day! But not yet--oh no! First I must learn to write a line decently, then a paragraph, then a page.

I must wait, oh, a very long time--ten years perhaps.

Five, anyway."

"Oh, if you do that," protested Golightly Ticke, "it will be like decanted champagne. A success at nineteen--"

"Twenty-one," corrected Elfrida.

"Twenty-one if you like--is a sparkling success. A success at thirty-one is--well, it lacks the accompaniments."

"You are a great deal too exacting, Miss Bell," Rattray put in; "those things you do for us are charming, you know they are."

"You are very good to say so. I'm afraid they're only frivolous sc.r.a.ps."

"My opinion is this," Rattray went on st.u.r.dily. "You only want material. n.o.body can make bricks without straw--to sell--and very few people can evolve books out of the air that any publisher will look at it. You get material for your sc.r.a.ps, and you treat it unconventionally, so the sc.r.a.ps supply a demand. It's a demand that's increasing every day--for fresh, unconventional matter.

Your ability to treat the sc.r.a.ps proves your ability to do more sustained work if you could find it. Get the material for a book, and I'll guarantee you'll do it well."

Elfrida looked from one to the other with bright eyes.

"What do you suggest?" she said, with a nervous little laugh. She had forgotten that she meant to wait ten years.

"That's precisely the difficulty," said Golightly, running his fingers through his hair.

"We must get hold of something," said Rattray. "You've never thought of doing a novel?"

Elfrida shook her head decidedly. "Not now," she said.

"I would not dare. I haven't looked at life long enough--I've had hardly any experience at all. I couldn't conceive a single character with any force or completeness.

And then for a novel one wants a leading idea--the plot, of course, is of no particular consequence. Rather I should say plots have merged into leading ideas; and I have none."

"Oh, distinctly!" observed Mr. Ticke finely. "A plot is as vulgar at this end of the century as a--as a dress improver, to take a feminine simile."

Rattray looked seriously uncomprehending, and slowly scratched the back of his hand. "Couldn't you find a leading idea in some of the modern movements," he asked --"in the higher education of women, for instance, or the suffrage agitation?"

"Or University Extension, or Bimetallism, or Eight Hours'

Labor, or Disestablishment!" Elfrida laughed. "No, Mr.

Rattray, I don't think I could.

"I might do some essays," she suggested.

Rattray, tilting his chair back, with his forefingers in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, pursed his lips "We couldn't get them read," he said. "It takes a well-established reputation to carry essays. People will stand them from a Lang or a Stevenson or that 'Obiter Dicta' fellow--not from an unknown young lady."

Elfrida bit her lip. "Of course I am not any of those."

"Miss Bell has done some idyllic verse," volunteered Golightly.

The girl looked at him with serious reprobation. "I did not give you permission to say that," she said gravely.

"No--forgive me!--but it's true, Rattray." He searched in his breast pocket and brought out a diminutive pocket-book. "May I show those two little things I copied?"

he begged, selecting a folded sheet of letter-paper from its contents. "This is serious, you know, really. We must go into all the chances."

Elfrida had a pang of physical distress.

"Oh," she said hastily, "Mr. Rattray will not care to see those. They weren't written for the _Age_, you know,"

she added, forcing a smile.