The Story of an Untold Love Part 13

"And I don't."

"What would they probably pay you for it?"

"What it is worth."

"If you will reconsider your determination, I will double the amount."

"Unfortunately," I laughed bitterly, "there are limits to what even _I_ will sell."

"I will give you two hundred and fifty dollars if you will write a laudatory review of my book," he offered.

"Have you ever dealt in consciences, Mr. Whitely?" I asked.

"Occasionally."

"Did you ever get any as cheap as that?"

"Many."

"I'm afraid you were buying shopworn and second-hand articles," I retorted; "or you may have gone to some bargain counter where they make a specialty of ninety-eight and forty-nine cent goods."

He never liked this satirical mood into which he sometimes drove me. He hesitated an instant, and then bid, "Three hundred."

"This reminds me of Faust," I remarked; but he was too intent on the matter in hand to see the point.

"I suppose it's only a question of amount?" he suggested blandly.

"You are quite right, Mr. Whitely. I will write you that review if you will pay me my price," I a.s.sented.

"I knew it," he a.s.serted exultingly. "But you are mistaken if you think I will pay any fancy price."

"Then it's a waste of time to talk any more about it," I answered, and resumed my work.

"It isn't worth three hundred, even," he argued, "but you may tell me what you will do it for."

"I will write that review for one hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars," I replied.

"What!"

"And from that price I will not abate one cent," I added.

Strangely enough, I did not write the notice.

It was amusing to see his eagerness for the criticisms of the book. The three American critical journals had notices eminently characteristic of them. The first was scholarly, praising moderately, with a touch of lemon-juice in the final paragraph that really only heightened its earlier commendation, but which made the book's putative author wince; the second was discriminating and balanced, with far more that was complimentary; while the third was the publisher's puff so regularly served up,--a colorless, sugary mush,--which my employer swallowed with much delectation. I am ashamed to say that I greatly enjoyed his pain over any harsh words. He always took for granted that the criticisms were correct, never realizing that as between an author, who has spent years on a book, and the average critic, who is at best superficial in his knowledge of a subject, the former is the more often right of the two. I tried to make this clear to him one day by asking him if he had never read Lord Brougham's review of Byron or Baron Jeffrey's review of Coleridge, and even brought him the astonishing tirades of those world-renowned critics; but it was time wasted. He preferred a flattering panegyric in the most obscure of little sheets to a really careful notice which praised less inordinately; yet while apparently believing all the flattery, he believed all the censoriousness as well, even in those cases known to every author where one critic praises what another blames.

"A Western paper says you do not know how to write English," he complained one day. "You ought to have taken more pains with the book, Dr. Hartzmann."

"The Academy and The Athenaeum both thought my style had merit," I answered, smiling.

"Nevertheless there must be something wrong, or this critic, who in other respects praises with remarkable discrimination, would certainly not have gone out of his way to mention it," he replied discontentedly.

Fortunately, unfavorable criticism, both in Europe and in America, was the exception, and not the rule; the book was generally praised, and sprang into an instant sale that encouraged and cheered me. Mr. Whitely was immensely gratified at the sudden reputation it achieved for him, and even while drinking deep of the mead of fresh authorship told me he thought he would publish another book. I knew it was an opportunity to make more money, but for some reason I felt unequal to beginning anew on what would be a purely mercenary task. I mentioned my plan of a work on the Moors, and promised, when I felt able to commence it, I would talk with him about terms. That was three months ago, yet every day I seem to feel less inclination, and in fact less ability, to undertake the labor.

For three years I have toiled to the utmost of my strength, and forced myself to endure the most rigid economy. It is cowardly, but at times I find myself hoping my present want of spirit and energy is the forerunner of an illness which will end the hopeless struggle.

Good-night, dear heart.

XVII

_March 8._ Each day I determine to spend my evening usefully, but try as I may, when the time comes I feel too weary to do good work, and so morbidly recur to these memories. I ought to fight the tendency, the more that in reverting to the past I seem only to dwell on its sadness, thus intensifying my own depression. Let me see if I cannot for one night write of the good fortune that has come to me in the last three years.

Pleased with the success of my book of travel and text-books, and knowing of my wish for work, the American publishers offered me the position of a.s.sistant editor of their magazine and reader of ma.n.u.scripts. By hard work and late hours the task could be done in my mornings and evenings, allowing me to continue in Mr. Whitely's employ; so I eagerly accepted the position. I can imagine few worse fates than reading the hopeless and impossible trash that comes to every publisher; but this was not my lot, for I was to read only the ma.n.u.scripts that had been winnowed of the chaff. Yet this very immunity, as it proved, nearly lost me an opportunity of trying to be of service to you.

Returning a bundle of stuff to the ma.n.u.script clerk one day, I saw "M.

Walton, 287 Madison Avenue, New York City," in your handwriting, on the cover of a bulky pile of sheets on his desk. Startled, I demanded, "What is this?"

"It's a rejected ma.n.u.script I was on the point of wrapping to return,"

the clerk answered.

Opening the cover, I saw, "A Woman's Problem, a Novel, by Aimez Lawton."

It needed little perception to detect your name in the anagram.

"Mrs. Graham has rejected it?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Give me the file about it, please," I requested; and after a moment's search he handed me the envelope, and I glanced over its meagre contents: a brief formal note from you, submitting it, and the short opinion of the woman reader. "Traces of amateurishness, but a work of considerable power and feeling, marred by an inconclusive ending," was the epitome of her opinion, coupled with the recommendation not to accept.

"Register it on my list, and I'll take it and look it over," I said, and went to my little editorial cuddy, feeling actually rich in the possession of the ma.n.u.script. Indeed, it was all I could do to go through my morning quota of proof-reading and "making up" dummy forms for the magazine's next issue, I was so eager for your book.

A single reading told me you had put the problem of your life into the story. It is true the heroine was different enough in many respects to make a.n.a.logy hardly perceptible, though she too was a tender, n.o.ble woman. She had never felt the slightest responsive warmth for any of her lovers, but she was cramped by the social conventions regarding unmarried women, and questioned whether her life would not be more potent if she married, even without love. One of her lovers was a man of force, brains, wealth, and ambition, outwardly an admirable match, respected by the world, and, most of all, able to draw about him the men of genius and intellect she wished to know, but whom her society lot debarred her from meeting. Yet your heroine was conscious of faults: she felt in him a touch of the soil that repels every woman instinctively; at times his nature seemed hard and unsympathetic, and his scientific work, for which he was famous, had narrowed his strong mind to think only of facts and practicalities, to the exclusion of everything ideal or beautiful. In the end, however, his persistent wooing convinced her of the strength of his feeling; and though she was conscious that she could never love him as she wished to love, the tale ended by her marrying him. Am I to blame for reading in this the story of Mr.

Whitely's courtship of you? I only marveled at how much of his true character you had detected under his veneer.

To me the story was sweet and n.o.ble. I loved your heroine from beginning to end. She was so strong even in her weaknesses; for you made her no unsubstantial ideal. I understood her craving something more than her allotted round of social amus.e.m.e.nts, and her desire for intercourse and friendship with finer and more purposeful people than she daily met. I even understood her willingness to accept love, when not herself feeling it; for my own life was so hungry-hearted that I had come to yearn for the slightest tenderness, no matter who the giver might be.

As soon as I realized that the story was your own, I hoped it might tell me something of your thoughts of my father and myself; but that part of your life you pa.s.sed over as if it never had been. Was the omission due to too much feeling or too little? I have always suspected that I served as a model for one of your minor characters: a dreamy, unsocial being, curiously variable in mood; at times talking learnedly and even wittily, but more often absolutely silent. He was by profession an artist, and you made him content to use his talent on book and magazine ill.u.s.tration, apparently without a higher purpose in life than to earn enough to support himself, in order that he might pa.s.s the remainder of his time in an intellectual indulgence scarcely higher in motive than more material dissipation. His evident sadness and lack of ambition was finally discovered to be due to a disappointment in love; and as a cure, your heroine introduced him to her best friend,--a young girl,--and through her influence he was roused to some ambition, and in the end he dutifully fell in love as your heroine wished. It was a sketch that made me wince, and yet at which I could not help but laugh.

I suppose it was a true picture, and I am quite conscious that at times I must seem ridiculous to you; for often my mood is such, or my interest in you is so strong, that I forget even the ordinary courtesies and conventions. There is a general idea that a lover is always at his best when with the woman he loves, but, from my own experience, I think he is quite as likely to be at his worst. To watch your graceful movements, to delight in the play of expression on your face, and to catch every inflection in your voice and every word you speak are pleasures so engrossing to me that I must appear to you even more abstracted than I ordinarily am, though a dreamer at best. And yet now and then I have thought you were conscious of a tenderness in me, which, try as I will, I cannot altogether hide.

The main fault of the novel was unquestionably that most accented by the reader, and, recognizing the story as the problem of your life, I understood why you supplied no solution to the riddle. You begged the question you propounded; the fact that your heroine married the hero being no answer, since only by the results of that marriage would it be possible to say if she had chosen the better part. It was this that convinced me you were putting on paper your own thoughts and mood. You were debating this theme, and could carry it in imagination to the point of marriage; but what lay beyond that was unknowable, and you made no attempt to invent a conclusion, the matter being too real to you to be merely a subject for artistic idealism and invention. Hitherto I had cla.s.sed Mr. Whitely with your other lovers, feeling sure that you could not love him any more than you could any of them; but now for the first time I began to fear his success.

After reading the story three times I carried it back to the ma.n.u.script clerk; and when I had allowed sufficient time for it to be returned, I wrote you a long letter, telling how I had come to read the story, and making a careful criticism and a.n.a.lysis of both its defects and its merits. I cannot tell you what a labor of love that letter was, or how much greater pains I took over your book than I have ever taken over any writing of my own. What was perhaps unfair, after pointing out the inconclusiveness of your ending, I sketched what I claimed was the logical end to the story. Thinking as I did that I knew the original in your mind, I was more influenced by my knowledge of him than I was by the character in your book, and therefore possibly my inference was unjust. But in hopes of saving you from Mr. Whitely, I pictured a sequel in which your heroine found only greater loneliness in her loveless union, her husband's love proving a tax, and not a boon; and marriage, instead of broadening her life, only bent and narrowed it by just so much as a strong-willed and selfish man would inevitably cramp the life of one over whom law and public opinion gave him control.

I was richly rewarded by your letter of thanks. You were so winning in your sweet acceptance of all my criticisms, and so lovable in your simple grat.i.tude, that I would have done a thousand times the work to earn such a letter. Yet even in this guerdon I could not escape the sting of my unhappy lot; for, unable to reconcile my distant conduct with the apparent trouble I had taken, you asked me to dinner, leaving me to select the day, and spoke of the pleasure it would give you to have an opportunity to talk over the book with me.

I can think of few greater delights than to have gone over your story, line by line and incident by incident. My love pleaded with me to take the chance, pointing out that it would do you no harm, but on the contrary aid you, and I found a dozen specious reasons; but tempt me as they might, I always came back to the truth that if you knew who I really was you would not invite me, nor accept a favor at my hands. In the end I wrote you that my time was so mortgaged that I must deny myself the pleasure. A small compensation was my offer that if you chose to rewrite the story and send me the ma.n.u.script, I would gladly read it over again and make any further suggestions which occurred to me. You thanked me by letter gracefully, but I was conscious of your bewilderment in the very care with which you phrased your note; and when next we met I could see that I had become more an enigma than ever,--for which there is indeed small wonder.

G.o.d keep you, my darling.