Masterman and Son Part 18

"Well, you needn't have said so. Didn't you see how Parker froze at once? But you don't understand our American way, so you must be excused."

"And what is the American way?"

"Always go a little beyond the truth, but on no account below it--people expect it of you. Leave them to make their discount."

This principle, so unblushingly announced, served Mr. Legion for a text, on which he discanted for some minutes, at the end of which discourse Arthur began to acquire some insight into the meaning of the word "bunk.u.m," and was in a position to apply the method of discount to Mr. Legion's own artless superlatives concerning his business methods and success in life.

Mr. Legion was genial, affable, cordial, in a way which no Englishman could have attained toward an entire stranger, and Arthur was disposed to set a high value on these qualities. Nevertheless, he could not but remark that the agent appeared anxious to evade any practical obligations imposed on him by Vickars's letter of introduction. He drew a picture, almost comic in its gross inaccuracy, as Arthur afterwards discovered, of the extreme ease with which fortunes were made in America, and especially by the pen. Magazine writers lived in sumptuous hotels, and successful novelists built for themselves elaborate palaces. It was the age of young men. A man who had not made a reputation at thirty was a "Has-been." The old method of slowly acquired and slowly widening reputation was obsolete. This was the day of literary booms.

"And after the boom the boomerang!" interjected Arthur.

"Very good--very good indeed. I always thought you Britishers had no sense of humour. It's a general belief in the States. But that's quite a smart saying. Sampson E. Dodge might have said it."

Arthur ought to have blushed at this high praise, but instead, he stolidly explained his epigram, and observed further that no literary man who respected himself would connive in a boom. "Hilary Vickars, for example."

"And that's just where Vickars makes his mistake," said Legion. "And what's the result? He isn't known."

"But he has done excellent work."

"You make me tired," answered Legion. "What's the good of doing excellent work if no one reads it? The public doesn't know good work from bad. Some one's got to tell them. An author must be written up.

And let me tell you another thing--the best writing in the world won't attract so much attention as half a dozen spicy paragraphs about the writer. Do you know how _The Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels_ became so popular?"

"Not having seen the book, it can't be supposed I do."

"Well, I'll tell you. I killed the author three times before his book came out."

"You did what?" asked Arthur, with a shout of laughter.

"Killed him, sir. Once he perished on the Matterhorn in a snow-storm.

The next time he was killed in a railway accident in Canada. The last time he was lost in a wreck in the South Sea Islands. By this time every one was talking of him. I received no fewer than four hundred press cuttings the last time headed, 'A Famous Author Lost at Sea.'

The name of Sampson E. Dodge became as famous as the President's. Of course, when his book came out every one rushed for it."

"And was he really in Switzerland, Canada, or the South Seas?"

"Certainly not. As safe as you are. Writing his book at a farmhouse in Vermont."

"Do you often practise this method, Mr. Legion?"

"Well, it must be applied judiciously, of course. Dodge writes adventure novels, so I give him adventures. But for quieter authors, you must invent something else. It used to be appendicitis, but that's nearly played out. Total loss of memory through overwork used to take, but I found that the authors objected to it. Double pneumonia in a lonely shack among the mountains, where he had gone to obtain local colour for his new novel, answers as well as anything else. And that reminds me--didn't you say Vickars had been ill?"

"Yes, he nearly died. Typhoid fever from bad drains."

"And didn't anybody write it up?"

"Not that I ever heard of."

"My! what a blunder! And with a new book coming out, too. I wish I could have had the handling of that 'story.'"

"I don't think Vickars would have liked that."

"No, I suppose not. You Britishers seem to be afraid of publicity. It almost amounts to a disease."

"We are getting over it by degrees. I a.s.sure you there are British authors who are quite reconciled to the immodesty of newspaper puffs.

But not men like Vickars. He is one of those who stand in proud silence, and is content to wait for his recognition."

"Well, I guess he'll have to wait till there's skating in Hades. The standing apart business is all very well if you've got the dollars and don't care; but if you haven't, it means starvation." He rose from the table, and said, "Shall we go?"

"Well, there's one thing I want to ask you first," said Arthur, "and as you haven't mentioned it, it seems I must. I want to know if you can put me in the way of earning my living in New York?"

"But, my dear sir, I thought you were just travelling through for pleasure."

"I was afraid that you were under that misconception, and I apologise for not undeceiving you sooner. The plain truth is, I have a very little money in my pocket, no particular experience of life, and my bread to earn."

"Dear me!--dear me! That sounds serious."

"It may easily become so."

The older man looked gravely sympathetic. Suddenly, however, he brightened up, as though he had discovered the solution of the whole problem.

"Well, young man, don't be alarmed," he cried. "Remember that you've come to the land of the free and the home of the brave. There are no feudal distinctions to keep you down here, as in your own unhappy country. This great and glorious Republic allows free play to individual exertions. Sir, America bids you rise, and all you have to do is to go out--and Rise!"

"It would be a good deal more to the purpose if you could tell me how and in what way to begin this process of rising."

"Ah! that's another matter. I must think that over. Come to me again in a day or two. And remember my advice to you is, Go out and Rise!"

He went out, too much amused with Legion's valediction to criticise the man very strictly. It was not until he lay a-bed that night, thinking over the curious adventures of the day, that a strong conviction seized him that Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion was a windbag.

XIII

ADVENTURES OF AN INCOMPETENT

When a youth is thoroughly adrift in a strange city, with no better equipment than a large stock of unapplied apt.i.tudes, he is likely to make many interesting discoveries concerning the real nature of life, the chief of which is that there is no way of living that has not a good deal more in it than meets the eye. By what adroit use of opportunity is the least foothold secured in this crowded world, by what intrigues and stratagems, comparable only with the art which governs battlefields, and less than that art only in the range of its effects! By what quickness of resource, adaptability to circ.u.mstance, infinite, weariless plotting and manoeuvering, were only so small a thing achieved as to sell a card of b.u.t.tons with success! Around this exiled youth jostled the rude, vigorous world of New York, a mult.i.tude of men and women each battling toward a certain goal, and not one of whom was not better equipped to win the race than himself. Certain phrases used by this jostling crowd struck upon his ear continuously, such as "to make good," "to deliver the goods." They implied that nothing was valued in New York save the sort of brute force that trampled its way into attention.

"He has made good, sir," was Legion's verdict on that eminent writer, Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, and the phrase was uttered with an accent of reverence which was undoubtedly sincere.

With Legion ideals and intentions counted for nothing; culture and scholarship were worthless commodities; the one thing he could appreciate was concrete success--"to make good."

The same spirit met Arthur everywhere. He found the newspapers pouring adulation at the feet of men against whom every kind of crime might be alleged; but they had "made good," and therefore were una.s.sailable. He remarked a cheerful disregard of morals, which was less disrespect than light-hearted ignorance; and the most curious thing of all was that the very men who talked as though honesty, faith, and trust did not exist were themselves men of amiable virtues. He found himself quickly and quietly appraised; a keen eye ran over him, reading his deficiencies, and his doom was p.r.o.nounced with a smile. An insulting word would have been less difficult to bear than that disconcerting smile; but these arbiters of his destiny never failed in courtesy, nor in the sort of kindness which finds its outlet in easy generosity. They would invite him to lunch, introduce him to clubs, allow him to believe that he had made real progress in their friendship and esteem; but when it came to the enunciation of some plan by which he might earn his bread, they became strangely silent. They "gave him a good time," to use another cheerful American phrase--to do so appeared to be part of a definite system of international courtesy; but they were at no pains to conceal their sense that he was a virtual incompetent.

Again and again, in the still hours of the morning, he recounted the rebuffs and misadventures of the previous day with wonder and misgiving. The irony of his position was laughable, if it had not been so serious. He had been told by the eloquent Legion to go out and rise; and certainly it appeared, by the light of conspicuous examples, that he was in a land where mult.i.tudes of men had risen from the lowliest to the loftiest positions with a singular celerity. Yet no one believed him capable of rising, nor indeed did he himself venture to a.s.sert it with any vigour of conviction. And in such moments there came to him the recollection of his father. For the first time he realised with some approach to adequacy the vital elements in his father's character. He told himself that had his father been flung suddenly into the streaming tides of New York, he would not have lived through twenty-four hours without getting his feet securely planted on the rung of some ladder that led to eminence. And then, with a sudden heat of resolution, he would tell himself that he was his father's son, and he would rise and go forth once more to hammer on the barred gates of chance.

"To-day I will not fail," he would cry.

And when the day closed, recording nothing but defeat, he would still cry, "To-morrow I must succeed," and endeavour to believe it.

The real trouble was that he was a.s.saulting the stern citadel of life with weapons not only imperfect, but nearly useless. He had been taught many things, but not the one thing needful; and he now perceived with humiliation that the humblest human creature who could work a typewriter, keep accounts, hew a stone, or shape a beam, was more efficient than he to wrest a living from the world. This discovery was the first real lesson he had ever learned from life. And it said much for his character, that he accepted it without resentment, without the bitterness and sulkiness of injured pride.