The Silver Poppy Part 23

Then plant, by the right of the mind, By the power of the tome and scroll, Plant your heel on their neck, and grind, Or their millions will grind your soul.

JOHN HARTLEY, "The Siren City."

Oh, these towering aspirations--without a fire-escape of humor to all their sky-sc.r.a.pers of endeavor!--"The Silver Poppy."

Cordelia, during a troubled night, dreamed that she had been captured by Indians and bound on two huge wild horses. These horses, she saw to her horror, refused to gallop off in line, and were slowly pulling her tortured body to pieces. But failing in this, she thought her Indians had retaken her and burned her at the stake, and that there was but one oil in all the wide world that could soothe the stinging agony that consumed her. She was seeking, naked, frenzied, alone, for this unfound ointment, when she suddenly wakened and found the autumn sun shining wholesomely on the clean high chimneys and housetops of the city.

Cordelia looked on that dream as an omen, and thinking it over, she was startled by it out of a mood of indecision and inactivity which for days had been hanging over her. Some vague sense of impending evil benumbed her. Sitting amid the torn and scattered feathers of a thousand disconsolate Cupids, she had asked herself again and again if the game was worth the candle, if the crown was worth the sweat and tears.

Acting under some sudden impulse, she made a personal call on Henry Slater, the senior member of the publishing house of Slater & Slater, of 148 Fifth Avenue. It was this firm which had handled so successfully, and, it might be added, so profitably to both themselves and the author, her earlier volume, The Silver Poppy. It was not unnatural, therefore, that from time to time the senior member of this business house should duly and most solicitously inquire of Miss Vaughan just when he should have the privilege and pleasure of considering another volume from her pen. Of late these inquiries had grown no less frequent, though, perhaps less hopeful. In the inspirational lull, when the town was still agog over the dramatization of the novel, he had made the most of his chance by reissuing the book in an _edition de luxe_, handsomely ill.u.s.trated and signed by the author--a hastily ordered voluntary to appease the wrath of a long waiting and impatient audience.

When Cordelia, accordingly, was ushered into the private office of Mr.

Henry Slater, that gentleman received her with every sign of cordiality.

She could not help recalling her first visit to the same office, an awkward and overawed girl from the country, who had been kept waiting a long half-hour before the very gentleman who now cordially placed a chair for her so much as asked her what her business might be. And she felt once more that after all there was nothing that succeeds like success.

She stated the purpose of her visit, and gave him as favorable and as graphic an outline of the new book as she was able. Her quick memory served her well, and there were few points of importance which she omitted from the movement of the story.

"This appeals to me strongly, very strongly indeed, Miss Vaughan. In fact, I see no reason in the world, none whatever, why such a book should not be the success of the season. I say season because, of course, you know our best books live only a season nowadays. But how soon did you say I might see the ma.n.u.script?"

"It might be a few days, it might be even a few weeks."

"H-m-m! That is unfortunate. You see, we have already closed our list for this year, and, as you must know, the season is already well advanced."

She looked studiously into his cold green eyes; she gazed at the high, shiny, narrowing forehead, and the long line of the thin, meditating lips that so seldom relaxed, and the sharp, narrow nose with its touch of quiet cruelty. But she knew him now better than she had once known him. She rose to go, languidly.

He looked at her disconcerted, even alarmed.

"But please be seated. Rather than hold a book over until the spring, we could, of course, reopen our list and hold back other matter. What would be the earliest date--the a.s.sured date--that we could go over the ma.n.u.script?"

Cordelia could not say, but she boldly a.s.sumed it would be within a week's time.

"Hm-m-m-m! Then, I presume, Miss Vaughan, there is no reason that we should not handle the new story on practically the same basis as your earlier book; provided, of course, that it is satisfactory to our readers in every respect?"

Cordelia smiled quietly.

"I'm afraid not," she said.

"They were exceptionally generous terms."

"But this time I have an exceptional book," she retorted quite impa.s.sively. In the smoke of battle Ney had forgotten there was a Napoleon. For the moment she felt that the book was one of her own making.

"That may be quite true, but--" Mr. Henry Slater checked himself, and then asked more suavely: "What new terms would you suggest, Miss Vaughan?"

"My terms would be one thousand dollars down, with a royalty of twelve per cent on all copies up to the tenth thousand, and a royalty on all copies over the tenth thousand of twenty per cent."

An amused, sympathetic, and incredulous smile crept over Mr. Henry Slater's face.

"Miss Vaughan, our house, during all its career, has never published a book on any such conditions. And I'm afraid it never will. For months now the book market has been greatly embarra.s.sed, greatly disturbed; compet.i.tion has been most keen, and we----"

"Then I shall not impose on your time any longer." She drew her furs about her with a touch of finality. "Good morning, Mr. Slater."

"Couldn't you leave the matter open for our consideration?" he asked, going with her to the door.

"It could only be on the terms I mentioned--and already I have been keeping a number of publishers waiting."

"Well, let me have a day or two to think the matter out. If my colleagues can possibly be won over, and if anything can be done, you will hear from me to-morrow, or the next day at the latest. Will that be satisfactory?"

Cordelia thought it would, and as she stepped triumphantly out to the waiting carriage she felt that she had won her terms. And she gloried in her conquest--she found it almost a joy, this parrying with the forces that opposed her. As she sat back in the cushions of the Spauldings'

bright little yellow-bodied Victoria and threaded her way through the crowded traffic of the lower avenue she could not help once more thinking of her first visit to a publisher--how overawed she had been by his lofty manner, how she had been bathed in a fine perspiration at the thought of her all too noticeable rusticity, how she had burned with silent rage at the stare of open admiration with which he had swept her from top to toe. But now, she knew, the tables were turned. Power!

Power--what wine was ever half so intoxicating! That was the thought which rang through her mind as she circled homeward by way of avenue and park, bowing here and there in response to many admiring smiles and not a few obsequiously doffed hats.

She sent a note to Hartley, after much thought on the matter, asking if he could let her have the ma.n.u.script at once. The book was brought back to her by the same messenger-boy who carried her note.

On the following morning she received a contract from Slater & Slater, duly made out and awaiting her signature. It called for a royalty of twelve per cent on all copies sold, and made no mention of a cash deposit.

This contract was at once sent back by Cordelia, unsigned.

The following morning the contract came back to her. It was, however, again returned unsigned by her, this time because of the stipulation that the one thousand dollars to be paid on publication was eventually to be deducted from the royalties on ten thousand copies sold.

Once more the contract was sent to her, but again she refused her signature.

Then Mr. Henry Slater came to her in person, and in a very sorrowful mien implored, almost tearfully, to know just what was still wrong.

Cordelia calmly insisted on the deletion of the newly inserted paragraph surrendering the dramatic rights of the book. These, she stated, she intended to retain absolutely. When this paragraph had been reluctantly eliminated the contract was at last duly signed and witnessed. It was not until Henry Slater had carefully folded his copy of the doc.u.ment and placed it in his breast-pocket that Cordelia realized just how much he had wanted her book. But still she felt the hardest part of her battle lay before her--she had come out of her first reconnaissance successfully enough, but she wondered if she had made a mistake in leaving her one avenue of retreat uncovered.

"There is one thing more I have not mentioned"--she hesitated.

Her publisher looked at her more openly; they were now on the common basis of the commercial.

"I prefer that this book be published under a name other than my own."

Henry Slater looked at her again, this time with widening eyes. He was more or less used to the eccentricity of genius.

"This was not mentioned in our contract."

"No; but I must insist upon it!"

"But for what reasons?" he cried, bewildered.

"They are purely personal reasons--I might find it hard to make you understand them." Then she added weakly: "But it often helps a book, doesn't it, to come out under--under a _nom de plume_?"

"Not in your case, Miss Vaughan!"

She caught at a last straw.

"But I have reason to believe--to believe that there may be a concerted attempt on the part of critics to attack me!"

He had already been looking over the ma.n.u.script, and still held it in his hand.