The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 43

But then, what hope is there now? I ask. Why, he was going to urge it upon them! And now, of course, he's simply sent it in there without a word!

Don't you see what it was--it was that letter of inquiry they wrote him! He paid no more attention to me than if I were a hound; but he had to send it when they wrote! And perhaps they said something about carelessness and that made him wild.

Oh, the thing is an endless spring of gall to me! I am all raw with it--I have to rush out on the street and walk away my pa.s.sion. I never saw my situation so plainly--the horrible impotence of it! Just see what I struggle against, the utter insane futility of everything I do! Why, I beat my wings in a void, I hammer my head against a wall!

--And now I must wait for that thing to come back--don't I know that it will come back? And don't I know that that will be the end of me?

A black, horrible gloom has settled down upon me. I am utterly lost in despair.

April 21st.

I will write no more about that man--my whole being is turned to bitterness. I wonder at myself--I have no longer one feeling left in this world except a black brooding hatred of him!

--And all the time the thing haunts me like a detective story--I can't find the solution! What does it mean? Why did he do it? It is so irrational--so impossible--so utterly incomprehensible! And shall I _never_ know the truth about it?

April 24th.

"We regret that we are not advised to undertake the publication of The Captive. We return the ma.n.u.script by express."

There it is! I read that thing, and I felt my whole being sinking down as if into h.e.l.l. There it is! And that is the end of it all! Oh, merciful Providence, is it not simply too cruel to be believed! Eleven weeks!

_Eleven weeks_!

--I can do no more--I do not know where to turn. I believe I shall go mad with my misery.

April 25th.

To-day I thought I would go up and see him--I thought I could not live until I knew what this thing meant. I heard myself saying, "I _demand_ to know why you treated me thus? I say I demand it! Before G.o.d, how _dared_ you--or don't you believe in a G.o.d?"

--Then again I thought, I will plead with him. It must be some mistake--I can't believe that it is all over. Why, he liked it! And now perhaps it was only looked over by some careless reader and flung aside!

But no--I could not go near the place! I could not face that man again. The memory of his look as he stood there in his insolence is so hateful to me that it makes me tremble.

April 26th.

I see myself crying this out from the housetops. I even wrote a letter to a newspaper, but I did not send it.

I went to a lawyer, a man I used to know. I told him I had no money--I asked him to help me. But I can not sue him--he was under no obligations, it seems; and I can not prove that the ma.n.u.script was injured in value by the delay.

So there is nothing that I can do. He will go his way--he will never think of me again. He is rich and famous.--

--I have just nine dollars left of my money. I can not possibly make it do more than three or four weeks; and meanwhile I sit and brood and watch them go by in blank despair.

April 28th.

I fight with myself--I must get that h.e.l.lish thing out of my head! I went to a publisher's to-day--I didn't have the heart to go in, but I gave it to the clerk.

It will take two or three weeks. This will be the eighth publisher.

I said to-day: "I will force myself to read, I will get myself together; I will not let myself be stamped to the mud by this man."

There is nothing I can do about it--I only poison my whole soul thinking of it. I must put it out of my mind--I must work!

May 1st.

I said to myself to-day: "Do you really believe that the world would heed that poem? Do you think that if any publisher published it, he could sell it?" I answered, "No, I do not."

If one took it I should think I was making a fool of him. I offer it on that chance!

--What am I going to do? I do not know. I must try to find some work that does not tear me to pieces; and then perhaps some day I shall be able to write something different.

May 3d.

My whole soul is in a turmoil these days. I struggle,--I can not give up while I live; but for what do I struggle? I am a man journeying in a thicket; I can not see one step before me.

--I try to forget myself--I try to get interested in a book. But I never had but one kind of interest. I can not get used to living without a purpose, without enthusiasm, without morality.

I have no ideas any more. My whole life is shrunken and contracted. It is all stagnant--the garden of my soul is full of weeds. The broad fields that I used to cover, the far-off things I used to strive for--what have they to do with me now?