Tramping on Life Part 126

Penton was pleased to hear, she said, that Daniel and I had got on so nicely together, while he was down at West Grove....

So, as I rode in the dusty, b.u.mping train, my mind reverted to our whole friendship together, and tenderness welled up in my heart for Penton Baxter.

In the office of the New York _Independent_ sat William Hayes Ward, old, bent over, with his triple-lensed gla.s.ses behind which his dim, enlarged eyes floated spectrally like those of a lemur.

He greeted me with a mixture of constraint and friendliness.

"Well, my boy, you've certainly got yourself into a mess this time."

"A 'mess,' Dr. Ward?" I interrogated, quoting back to him the word he had used,--with rebuke in my voice.

"How else shall I phrase it?"

"--with the understanding that I expect from an old friend, one who bought my first poems, encouraged my first literary endeavours,--who enheartened and helped me at the inception of my struggle for recognition and fame."

"And now you've won too much of the baser coinage of fame, of a kind that a poet should never have."

"I have a poem with me ... one on the subject of what Christ wrote on the sand--after which he bade the woman go and sin no more ... and he who was without sin should cast the first stone."

Dr. Ward looked over the half-moons of his triple gla.s.ses at me ... he reached for the poem and read it.

"Yes, it's a fine poem, with that uniqueness in occasional lines, that occasional touch of power, that marks your worst effusions, Mr.

Gregory!... but," paused he, "we do not allow the _Woman Taken in Adultery_ in the columns of the _Independent_."

"Well," I shot back, pleased with myself at the retort I was making, "well, I'm mighty glad Christ didn't keep her out of the pages of the New Testament, Dr. Ward!"

He barely smiled. He fixed me with a steadfast look of concern.

"Are you still with--with Mrs. Baxter?"

"Yes--since you ask it."

"The sooner you put that woman out of your life the better for you."

"Dr. Ward--one moment!... understand that no woman I love can be spoken of as 'that woman' in my presence--if you were not an old man!--" I faltered, choking with resentment.

"Now, now, my dear boy," he replied very gently, "I am older than you say ... I am a very, very old man ... and I know life--"

"But do you know the woman you speak of?"

"I have met Mrs. Baxter casually with her husband several times." He stopped short. He paused, gave a gesture of acquiescence.

"Oh, come, Mr. Gregory, you're right ... quite right ... I had no right whatever to speak to you as I have--

"But please interpret it as my serious concern over your career as a poet ... it seems such a pity ... you had such a good start."

"You mean?--" I began, and halted.

"Precisely ... I mean that for the next two or three years all the reputable magazines will not dare consider even a masterpiece from your hands."

"In other words, if Sh.e.l.ley were alive to-day and were the same Sh.e.l.ley, he would be presented with a like boycott?"

"If his manner of living came out in the papers--yes."

"And Francois Villon?"

"Undoubtedly."

"I'm in good company then, am I not?"

"You should thank me for being frank with you."

"I do thank you ... that explains why the atmosphere up at the office of the _National_ was as cold as the refrigerator-box of a meat car, when I was up there an hour ago ... but they were not as frank as you ... they acted like a company of undertakers officiating at my funeral."

I was glad to find myself back in my little cottage, that same night--back in my little cottage, and in the arms of the woman who was everything to me, no matter if they said she spelled the ruination of my career.

For any man, I held, and still hold, who lets a woman ruin his career, ought to have it ruined.

I did not tell her of what Dr. Ward had told me. Why cause her unnecessary worry?

After all, the magazine world was not the only medium to present my literary wares to the public. There remained the book world, a less narrow and prejudiced one.

Kennerley had written me that he waited eagerly the completion of my Biblical play.

And Zueblin, of the now defunct _Twentieth Century_ had just sent me a twenty-five dollar check for a poem called _Lazarus Speaks_.

I brought back with me from New York two books as a present for Hildreth ... Mary Wollstonecraft's _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,_ and _The Life of Mary Wollestonecraft_ ... these were two books she had long desired. She was thoroughly pleased with her resemblance to the frontispiece picture of the celebrated woman radical, in the _Life_.

"You possess all her vivacity, all her intelligence ... but you are beautiful where she was plain ... she is like a plainer sister of yours."

While in New York I had also paid a visit to the editor of one of the biggest sensational magazines in the city, and I had arranged with him, acting as Hildreth's agent, for a thousand dollars advance on her unfinished novel. The editor had dictated a letter in which he promised to deliver the thousand on receipt of two-thirds of the book....

Hildreth kissed me again and again when I gave her the letter....

"Johnnie, you really are wonderful ... and quite practical, after all."