That Fortune Part 3

Now that the days of preparation were over, and Philip found himself in New York, face to face with the fact that he had nowhere to look for money to meet the expense of rent, board, and clothes except to his own daily labor, and that there was another economy besides that which he had practiced as to luxuries, there were doubtless hours when his faith wavered a little in the wisdom of the decision that had invested all his patrimony in himself. He had been fortunate, to be sure, in securing a clerk's desk in the great law-office of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle, and he had the kindly encouragement of the firm that, with close application to business, he would make his way. But even in this he had his misgivings, for a great part of his acquirements, and those he most valued, did not seem to be of any use in his office-work. He had a lofty conception of his chosen profession, as the right arm in the administration of justice between man and man. In practice, however, it seemed to him that the object was to win a case rather than to do justice in a case.

Unfortunately, also, he had cultivated his imagination to the extent that he could see both sides of a case. To see both sides is indeed the requisite of a great lawyer, but to see the opposite side only in order to win, as in looking over an opponent's hand in a game of cards. It seemed to Philip that this clear perception would paralyze his efforts for one side if he knew it was the wrong side. The argument was that every cause a man's claim or his defense--ought to be presented in its fullness and urged with all the advocate's ingenuity, and that the decision was in the bosom of an immaculate justice on the bench and the unbiased intelligence in the jury-box. This might be so. But Philip wondered what would be the effect on his own character and on his intellect if he indulged much in the habit of making the worse appear the better cause, and taking up indifferently any side that paid. For himself, he was inclined always to advise clients to "settle," and he fancied that if the occupation of the lawyer was to explain the case to people ignorant of it, and to champion only the right side, as it appeared to an unprejudiced, legally trained mind, and to compose instead of encouraging differences, the law would indeed be a n.o.ble profession, and the natural misunderstandings, ignorance, and different points of view would make business enough.

"Stuff!" said Mr. Sharp. "If you begin by declining causes you disapprove of, the public will end by letting you alone in your self-conceited squeamishness. It's human nature you've got to deal with, not theories about law and justice. I tell you that men like litigation.

They want to have it out with somebody. And it is better than fisticuffs."

From Mr. Hunt, who moved in the serener upper currents of the law, Philip got more satisfaction.

"Of course, Mr. Burnett, there are miserable squabbles in the law practice, and contemptible pettifoggers and knaves, and men who will sell themselves for any dirty work, as there are in most professions and occupations, but the profession could not exist for a day if it was not on the whole on the side of law and order and justice.

"No doubt it needs from time to time criticism and reformation. So does the church. You look at the characters of the really great lawyers! And there is another thing. In dealing with the cases of our complex life, there is no accomplishment, no learning in science, art, or literature, that the successful pract.i.tioner will not find it very advantageous to possess. And a lawyer will never be eminent who has not imagination."

Philip thought he had a very good chance of exercising his imagination in the sky chamber where he slept--a capital situation from which to observe the world. There could not have been an uglier view created--a shapeless ma.s.s of brick and stone and painted wood, a collected, towering monstrosity of rectangular and inharmonious lines, a realized dream of hideousness--but for the splendid sky, always changing and doing all that was possible in the gleams and shadows and the glowing colors of morning and evening to soften the ambitious work of man; but for the wide horizon, with patches of green sh.o.r.es and verdant flats washed by the kindly tide; but for the Highlands and Staten Island, the gateway to the ocean; but for the great river and the mighty bay shimmering and twinkling and often iridescent, and the animated life of sails and steamers, the leviathans of commerce and the playthings of pleasure, and the beetle-like, monstrous ferry-boats that pushed their noses through all the confusion, like intelligent, business-like saurians that knew how to keep an appointed line by a clumsy courtesy of apparent yielding. Yes, there was life enough in all this, and inspiration, if one only knew what to be inspired about.

When Philip came home from the office at sunset, through the bustling streets, and climbed up to his perch, he insensibly brought with him something of the restless energy and strife of the city, and in this mood the prospect before him took on a certain significance of great things accomplished, of the highest form of human energy and achievement; he was a part of this exuberant, abundant life, to succeed in the struggle seemed easy, and for the moment he possessed what he saw.

The little room had s.p.a.ce enough for a cot bed, a toilet-stand, a couple of easy-chairs--an easy-chair is the one article of furniture absolutely necessary to a reflecting student--some well-filled book-shelves, a small writing-desk, and a tiny closet quite large enough for a wardrobe which seemed to have no disposition to grow. Except for the books and the writing-desk, with its heterogeneous ma.n.u.scripts, unfinished or rejected, there was not much in the room to indicate the taste of its occupant, unless you knew that his taste was exhibited rather by what he excluded from the room than by what it contained. It must be confessed that, when Philip was alone with his books and his ma.n.u.scripts, his imagination did not expand in the directions that would have seemed profitable to the head of his firm. That life of the town which was roaring in his ears, that panorama of prosperity spread before him, related themselves in his mind not so much as incitements to engage in the quarrels of his profession as something demanding study and interpretation, something much more human than processes and briefs and arguments. And it was a dark omen for his success that the world interested him much more for itself than for what he could make out of it. Make something to be sure he must--so long as he was only a law clerk on a meagre salary--and it was this necessity that had much to do with the production of the ma.n.u.scripts. It was a joke on Philip in his club--by-the-way, the half-yearly dues were not far off--that he was doing splendidly in the law; he already had an extensive practice in chambers!

The law is said to be a jealous mistress, but literature is a young lady who likes to be loved for herself alone, and thinks permission to adore is sufficient reward for her votary. Common-sense told Philip that the jealous mistress would flout him and land him in failure if he gave her a half-hearted service; but the other young lady, the Helen of the professions, was always beckoning him and alluring him by the most subtle arts, occupying all his hours with meditations on her grace and beauty, till it seemed the world were well lost for her smile. And the fascinating jade never hinted that devotion to her brought more drudgery and hara.s.sment and pain than any other service in the world. It would not have mattered if she had been frank, and told him that her promise of eternal life was illusory and her rewards commonly but a flattering of vanity. There was no resisting her enchantments, and he would rather follow her through a world of sin and suffering, pursuing her radiant form over bog and moor, in penury and heartache, for one sunrise smile and one glimpse of her sunset heaven, than to walk at ease with a commonplace maiden on any illumined and well-trod highway.

V

It is the desire of every ambitious soul to, enter Literature by the front door, and the few who have patience and money enough to live without the aid of the beckoning Helen may enter there. But a side entrance is the destiny of most aspirants, even those with the golden key of genius, and they are a long time in working their way to be seen coming out, of the front entrance. It is true that a man can attract considerable and immediate attention by trying to effect an entrance through the sewer, but he seldom gains the respect of the public whom he interests, any more than an exhibitor of fireworks gains the reputation of an artist that is accorded to the painter of a good picture.

Philip was waiting at the front door, with his essays and his prose symphonies and his satirical novel--the satire of a young man is apt to be very bitter--but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher and not the muse of literature kept the door.

There was a fellow-boarder with Philip, whose acquaintance he had made at the common table in the bas.e.m.e.nt, who appeared to be free of the world of letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed little fellow, who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight years in the study of life, in gaining a.s.surance and confidence in himself, and also presented himself as one who knew the nether world completely but was not of it. He would have said of himself that he knew it profoundly, that he frequented it for "material," but that his home was in another sphere. The impression was that he belonged among those brilliant guerrillas of both s.e.xes, in the border-land of art and society, who lived daintily and talked about life with unconventional freedom. Slight in figure, with very black hair, and eyes of cloudy gray, an olive complexion, and features trained to an immobility proof against emotion or surprise, the whole poised as we would say in the act of being gentlemanly, it is needless to say that he took himself seriously. His readiness, self-confidence, c.o.c.ksureness, Philip thought all expressed in his name--Olin Brad.

Mr. Brad was not a Bohemian--that is, not at all a Bohemian of the recognized type. His fashionable dress, closely trimmed hair, and dainty boots took him out of that cla.s.s. He belonged to the new order, which seems to have come in with modern journalism--that is, Bohemian in principle, but of the manners and apparel of the favored of fortune. Mr.

Brad was undoubtedly clever, and was down as a bright young man in the list of those who employed talent which was not dulled by conscientious scruples. He had stood well in college, during three years in Europe he had picked up two or three languages, dissipated his remaining small fortune, acquired expensive tastes, and knowledge, both esoteric and exoteric, that was valuable to him in his present occupation. Returning home fully equipped for a modern literary career, and finding after some bitter experience that his accomplishments were not taken or paid for at their real value by the caterers for intellectual New York, he had dropped into congenial society on the staff of the Daily Spectrum, a mighty engine of public opinion, which scattered about the city and adjacent territory a million of copies, as prodigally as if they had been auctioneers' announcements. Fastidious people who did not read it gave it a bad name, not recognizing the cla.s.sic and heroic att.i.tude of those engaged in pitchforking up and turning over the muck of the Augean stables under the pretense of cleaning them.

Mr. Brad had a Socratic contempt for this sort of fault-finding. It was answer enough to say, "It pays. The people like it or they wouldn't buy it. It commands the best talent in the market and can afford to pay for it; even clergymen like to appear in its columns--they say it's a providential chance to reach the ma.s.ses. And look at the 'Morning GooGoo' (this was his nickname for one of the older dailies), it couldn't pay its paper bills if it hadn't such a small circulation."

Mr. Brad, however, was not one of the editors, though the acceptance of an occasional short editorial, sufficiently piquant and impudent and vivid in language--to suit, had given him hopes. He was salaried, but under orders for special service, and was always in the hope that the execution of each new a.s.signment would bring him into popular notice, which would mean an advance of position and pay.

Philip was impressed with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in the profession.

"It isn't an easy thing," said Mr. Brad, "to cater to a public that gets tired of anything in about three days. But it is just as well satisfied with a contradiction as with the original statement. It calls both news.

You have to watch out and see what the people want, and give it to 'em. It is something like the purveying of the manufacturers and the dry-goods jobber for the changing trade in fashions; only the newspaper has the advantage that it can turn a somersault every day and not have any useless stock left on hand.

"The public hasn't any memory, or, if it has, this whirligig process destroys it. What it will not submit to is the lack of a daily surprise.

Keep that in your mind and you can make a popular newspaper. Only,"

continued Mr. Brad, reflectively, "you've got to hit a lot of different tastes."

"You'd laugh," this artist in emotions went on, after a little pause, "at some of my a.s.signments. There was a run awhile ago on elopements, and my a.s.signment was to have one every Monday morning. The girl must always be lovely and refined and moving in the best society; elopement with the coachman preferred, varied with a teacher in a Sunday-school.

Invented? Not always. It was surprising how many you could find ready made, if you were on the watch. I got into the habit of locating them in the interior of Pennsylvania as the safest place, though Jersey seemed equally probable to the public. Did I never get caught? That made it all the more lively and interesting. Denials, affidavits, elaborate explanations, two sides to any question; if it was too hot, I could change the name and shift the scene to a still more obscure town. Or it could be laid to the zeal of a local reporter, who could give the most ingenious reasons for his story. Once I worked one of those imaginary reporters up into such prominence for his clever astuteness that my boss was taken in, and asked me to send for him and give him a show on the paper.

"Oh, yes, we have to keep up the domestic side. A paper will not go unless the women like it. One of the a.s.signments I liked was 'Sayings of Our Little Ones.' This was for every Tuesday morning. Not more than half a column. These always got copied by the country press solid. It is really surprising how many bright things you can make children of five and six years say if you give your mind to it. The boss said that I overdid it sometimes and made them too bright instead of 'just cunning.'

"'Psychological Study of Children' had a great run. This is the age of science. Same with animals, astronomy--anything. If the public wants science, the papers will give it science.

"After all, the best hold for a lasting sensation is an attack upon some charity or public inst.i.tution; show up the abuses, and get all the sentimentalists on your side. The paper gets sympathy for its fearlessness in serving the public interests. It is always easy to find plenty of testimony from ill-used convicts and grumbling pensioners."

Undoubtedly Olin Brad was a clever fellow, uncommonly well read in the surface literatures of foreign origin, and had a keen interest in what he called the metaphysics of his own time. He had many good qualities, among them friendliness towards men and women struggling like himself to get up the ladder, and he laid aside all jealousy when he advised Philip to try his hand at some practical work on the Spectrum. What puzzled Philip was that this fabricator of "stories" for the newspaper should call himself a "realist." The "story," it need hardly be explained, is newspaper slang for any incident, true or invented, that is worked up for dramatic effect. To state the plain facts as they occurred, or might have occurred, and as they could actually be seen by a competent observer, would not make a story. The writer must put in color, and idealize the scene and the people engaged in it, he must invent dramatic circ.u.mstances and positions and language, so as to produce a "picture."

And this picture, embroidered on a commonplace incident, has got the name of "news." The thread of fact in this glittering web the reader must pick out by his own wits, a.s.sisted by his memory of what things usually are. And the public likes these stories much better than the unadorned report of facts. It is accustomed to this view of life, so much so that it fancies it never knew what war was, or what a battle was, until the novelists began to report them.

Mr. Brad was in the story stage of his evolution as a writer. His light facility in it had its attraction for Philip, but down deep in his nature he felt and the impression was deepened by watching the career of several bright young men and women on the press--that indulgence in it would result in such intellectual dishonesty as to destroy the power of producing fiction that should be true to life. He was so impressed by the ability and manifold accomplishments of Mr. Brad that he thought it a pity for him to travel that road, and one day he asked him why he did not go in for literature.

"Literature!" exclaimed Mr. Brad, with some irritation; "I starved on literature for a year. Who does live on it, till he gets beyond the necessity of depending on it? There is a lot of humbug talked about it.

You can't do anything till you get your name up. Some day I will make a hit, and everybody will ask, 'Who is this daring, clever Olin Brad?'

Then I can get readers for anything I choose to write. Look at Champ Lawson. He can't write correct English, he never will, he uses picturesque words in a connection that makes you doubt if he knows what they mean. But he did a dare-devil thing picturesquely, and now the publishers are at his feet. When I met him the other day he affected to be bored with so much attention, and wished he had stuck to the livery-stable. He began at seventeen by reporting a runaway from the point of view of the hostler."

"Well," said Philip, "isn't it quite in the line of the new movement that we should have an introspective hostler, who perhaps obeys Sir Philip Sidney's advice, 'Look into your heart and write'? I chanced the other night in a company of the unconventional and illuminated, the 'poster' set in literature and art, wild-eyed and anaemic young women and intensely languid, 'nil admirari' young men, the most advanced products of the studios and of journalism. It was a very interesting conclave. Its declared motto was, 'We don't read, we write.' And the members were on a constant strain to say something brilliant, epigrammatic, original. The person who produced the most outre sentiment was called 'strong.' The women especially liked no writing that was not 'strong.' The strongest man in the company, and adored by the women, was the poet-artist Courci Cleves, who always seems to have walked straight out of a fashion-plate, much deferred to in this set, which affects to defer to nothing, and a thing of beauty in the theatre lobbies. Mr.

Cleves gained much applause for his well-considered wish that all that has been written in the world, all books and libraries, could be destroyed, so as to give a chance to the new men and the fresh ideas of the new era."

"My dear sir," said Brad, who did not like this caricature of his friends, "you don't make any allowance for the eccentricities of genius."

"You would hit it nearer if you said I didn't make allowance for the eccentricities without genius," retorted Philip.

"Well," replied Mr. Brad, taking his leave, "you don't understand your world. You go your own way and see where you will come out."

And when Philip reflected on it, he wondered if it were not rash to offend those who had the public ear, and did up the personals and minor criticisms for the current prints. He was evidently out of view.

No magazine paper of his had gained the slightest notice from these sublimated beings, who discovered a new genius every month.

A few nights after this conversation Mr. Brad was in uncommon spirits at dinner.

"Anything special turned up?" asked Philip.

"Oh, nothing much. I've thrown away the chance of the biggest kind of a novel of American life. Only it wouldn't keep. You look in the Spectrum tomorrow morning. You'll see something interesting."

"Is it a--" and Philip's incredulous expression supplied the word.

"No, not a bit. And the public is going to be deceived this time, sure, expecting a fake. You know Mavick?"

"I've heard of him--the operator, a millionaire."

"A good many times. Used to be minister or consul or something at Rome.

A great swell. It's about his daughter, Evelyn, a stunning girl about sixteen or seventeen--not out yet."

"I hope it's no scandal."

"No, no; she's all right. It's the way she's brought up--shows what we've come to. They say she's the biggest heiress in America and a raving beauty, the only child. She has been brought up like the Kohinoor, never out of somebody's sight. She has never been alone one minute since she was born. Had three nurses, and it was the business of one of them, in turn, to keep an eye on her. Just think of that. Never was out of the sight of somebody in her life. Has two maids now--always one in the room, night and day."

"What for?"

"Why, the parents are afraid she'll be kidnapped, and held for a big ransom. No, I never saw her, but I've got the thing down to a dot.

Wouldn't I like to interview her, though, get her story, how the world looks to her. Under surveillance for sixteen years! The 'Prisoner of Chillon' is nothing to it for romance."