The Adventures of a Widow Part 11

"You are right," he said. "You will learn that, among other lessons, before you are much older. There is no such thing as not picking and choosing. Whatever the grade of life, it is always done by those who have any sort of social impulse. I believe it is done in Eighth Avenue and Avenue A, when they give parties in little rooms of tenement houses and hire a fiddler to speed the dance. There is always some Michael or Fritz who has been ostracized. The O'Haras and the Schneiders follow the universal law. Wherever three are gathered together, the third is pretty sure to be of questionable welcome. This isn't an ideal planet, my dear lady, and 'liberty' and 'fraternity' are good enough watchwords, but 'equality' never yet was one;--if I didn't remember my Buckle, my Spencer, my Huxley, and my dear old Whig Macaulay, I should add that it never _would_ be one."

Just at this point Kindelon and Pauline found themselves face to face with two gentlemen who were both in a seemingly excited frame of mind.

Pauline remembered that they had both been presented to her not long ago. She recollected their names, too; her memory had been nerved to meet all retentive exigencies. The large, florid man, with the bush of sorrel beard, was Mr. Bedlowe, and the smaller, smooth-shaven man, with the consumptive stoop and the professorial blue spectacles, was Mr.

Howe.

Mr. Howe and Mr. Bedlowe were two novelists of very opposite repute.

Kindelon had already caught a few words from the latter, querulously spoken.

"Ah, so you think modern novel-writing a sham, my dear Howe?" he said, pausing with his companion, while either gentleman bowed recognition to Pauline. "Isn't that rank heresy from the author of a book that has just been storming the town?"

"My book didn't storm the town, Kindelon," retorted Mr. Howe, lifting a hand of scholarly slimness and pallor toward his opaque goggles. "I wish it had," he proceeded, somewhat wearily. "No; Bedlowe and I were having one of our old quarrels. I say that we novelists of the Anglo-Saxon tongue are altogether too limited. That is what I mean by declaring that modern novel-writing is a sham."

"He means a great deal more, I'm sorry to say," here cried Mr. Bedlowe, who had a habit of grasping his sorrel beard in one hand and thrusting its end toward his hirsute lips as though they were about to be allured by some edible mouthful.

"He means, Kindelon, that because we haven't the shocking immoral lat.i.tude of the French race, we can't properly express ourselves in fiction. And he goes still further--Howe is always going still further every fresh time that I meet him. He says that if the modern novelist dared to express himself on religious subjects, he would be an agnostic."

"Precisely!" cried Mr. Howe, with the pale hand wavering downward from the eerie gla.s.ses. "But he doesn't dare! If he did, his publisher wouldn't publish him!"

"My publisher publishes _me_!" frowned Mr. Bedlowe.

"Oh, you're a pietist," was the excited answer. "At least, you go in for that when you write your novels. It pays, and you do it. I don't say that you do it _because_ it pays, but ..."

"You infer it," grumbled Mr. Bedlowe, "and that's almost the same as saying it." He visibly bristled here. "I've got a wholesome faith," he proceeded, with hostility. "That's why I wrote 'The Christian Knight in Armor' and 'The Doubtful Soul Satisfied.' Each of them sold seventy thousand copies apiece. There's a proof that the public wanted them--that they filled a need."

"So does the 'Weekly Wake-Me-Up,'" said Mr. Howe, with mild disdain. "My dear Bedlowe, you have two qualities as a modern novel-writer which are simply atrocious--I mean, plot and piety. The natural result of these is popularity. But your popularity means nothing. You utterly neglect a.n.a.lysis"--

"I despise a.n.a.lysis!"

"You entirely ignore style"--

"I express my thoughts without affectation."

"Your characters are wholly devoid of subtlety"--

"I abhor subtlety!"

"You preach sermons"--

"Which thousands listen to!"

"You fail completely to represent your time"--

"My readers, who represent my time, don't agree with you."

"You end your books with marriages and christenings in the most absurdly old-fashioned way"--

"I end a story as every story _should_ end. Sensible people have a sensible curiosity to know what becomes of hero and heroine."

"Curiosity is the vice of the vulgar novel-reader. Psychological interest is the one sole interest that should concern the more cultured mind. And though you may sell your seventy thousand copies, I beg to a.s.sure you that ..."

"Had we not heard quite enough of that hot squabble?" said Kindelon to Pauline, after he had pressed with her into other conversational regions, beyond the a.s.sault and defence of these two inimical novelists.

"I rather enjoyed it," said Pauline.

"They would have presently dragged us into their argument," returned Kindelon. "It was just as well that we retired without committing ourselves by an opinion. I should have sided with Howe, though I think him an extremist."

"I know some of Mr. Bedlowe's novels," said Pauline. "They are very popular in England. I thought them simply dire."

"And Howe is a real artist. He has a sort of cult here, though not a large one. What he says is true enough, in the main. The modern novelist dares not express his religious views, unless they be of the most conventional and tame sort. And how few fine minds are there to-day which are not rationalistic, unorthodox? A man like Bedlowe coins money from his milk-and-water plat.i.tudes, while Howe must content himself with the recognition of a small though devout circle.... Did you meet the great American dramatist, by the way? I mean Mr. Osgood Paiseley. He is standing over yonder near the mantel ... that slender little man with the abnormally ma.s.sive head."

"Yes, I met him," returned Pauline. "He is coming this way."

"Have you any new dramatic work in preparation, Paiseley?" asked Kindelon, as the gentleman who had just been mentioned now drew near himself and Pauline.

"Yes," was Mr. Paiseley's reply. He spoke with a nasal tone and without much grammatical punctilio. "I've got a piece on hand that I'm doing for Mattie Molloy. Do you know her at all? She does the song-and-dance business with comedy variations. I think the piece'll be a go; it'll just suit her, I guess."

"Your last melodrama, 'The Brand of Cain,' was very successful, was it not?" pursued Kindelon.

"Well," said Mr. Paiseley, as he threw back an errant lock or two from his great width of swollen-looking forehead, "I'm afraid it isn't going to catch on so very well, after all. The piece is all right, but the company can't play it. Cooke guys his part because he don't like it, and doesn't get a hand on some of the strongest lines that have been put into any actor's mouth for the past twenty years--fact! as sure as you're born! Moore makes up horribly, and Kitty Vane is so over-weighted that Miss Cowes, in a straight little part of only a few lengths, gets away with her for two scenes; and Sanders is awfully preachy. If I could have had my own say about casting the piece, we'd have turned away money for six weeks and made it a sure thing for the road. I mean for the big towns, not the one-night places; it's got too many utility-people to make it pay there. But I shan't offer anything more to the stock-theatres; after this, I'm going to fit stars."

Pauline turned a covertly puzzled look upon her companion. She seemed to be hearing a new language. And yet, although the words were all familiar enough, their collocation mystified her.

"You think there is more profit, then, in fitting stars," said Kindelon, "if there is less fame?"

Mr. Paiseley laughed, with not a little bitterness. "Oh, fame," he said, "is the infirmity of the young American dramatist. I've outgrown it. I used to have it. But what's the use of fighting against France and England in the stock-theatres? Give me a fair show there, and I can draw bigger money than Dennery or Sardou--don't you make any mistake! But those foreign fellows are always crowding us natives out of New York.

The managers hem and smirk over our pieces, and say they're good enough, but they've got something that's running well at the Porte Sang Martang or the Odeun in Paris. The best we can do is to have our plays done by a scratch company at some second-rate house, or, if it's a first-cla.s.s house, they give us bad time. No, I fit travelling stars at so much cash down, and so much royalty afterward--that is, when I can't get a percentage on the gross. I don't work any more for fame; I want my dinner...."

"Your friend takes a rather commercial view of the American stage," said Pauline to Kindelon, after they had again moved onward.

"I am sorry to say that it is almost the only view taken by any of our dramatists. Paiseley is thoroughly representative of his cla.s.s. They would all like to write a fine play, but they nearly all make the getting of money their primary object. Now, I do not believe that the l.u.s.t of gain has ever been a foremost incentive in the production of any great mental achievement. Our novels and poems are to-day better than our plays, I think, because they are written with a more artistic and a less monetary stimulus. The rewards of the successful playwright may mean a fortune to him; he always remembers that when he begins, and he usually begins for the reason that he does remember it...."

Pauline had glimpses of not a few more individualities, that evening, before she at length took her leave.

"Well, how have you enjoyed it?" asked Kindelon, as they were being driven home together.

"I have not entirely enjoyed it," was the slow answer.

"You have been disappointed?"

"Yes."

"But your purpose of the _salon_ still remains good?"

"Indeed it does!" she exclaimed with eagerness. "I shall begin my work--I shall issue my invitations in a few days. Mrs. Dares will no doubt supply me with a full list of names and addresses."

"And you will invite everybody?"

"Oh, by no means. I shall pick and choose."