William Dean Howells

“ In one place there was a spread of low sheds, neighbored by towering apartment-houses; some old cart-horses were cropping the belated grass; and comfortable companies of hens and groups of turkeys were picking about the stableyard; a shambling cottage fronted on the avenue next the park, and drooped behind its dusty, leafless vines.
“He might be got into that,” said Kane, whimsically, “at no increase of rent, and at much increase of comfort and quiet—at least till the Afreet began to get in his work.”
“Wouldn’t it be rather too much like that eremitism which he’s so down on?” ”

“ It is outlaw Nature that I object to, the savage survival from chaos, the mother of earthquakes and cyclones, blizzards and untimely frosts, inundations and indigestions. But ordered Nature—the Nature of the rolling year; night and day, and seedtime and harvest”—
“The seasons,” Ray broke in scornfully, from the resentment still souring in his soul, “turn themselves upside down and wrong end to, about as often as financial panics occur, and the farmer that has to rely on them is as apt to get left as the husbandman that sows and reaps in Wall Street.”
“Ah!” sighed Kane. ”

“ People expected love to begin mysteriously, but they did not like it to end so; though life itself began mysteriously and ended so. He believed that he should really try it; a story that opened with an engagement ought to be as interesting as one that closed with an engagement; and it would be very original. He must study his own affair very closely when he got a little further away from it. There was no doubt but that when the chances that favored love were so many and so recognizable, the chance that undid it could at last be recognized. It was merely a chance, and that ought to be shown. ”

“ A man so hopeful as Hughes is the reductio ad absurdum of the human proposition. How can there reasonably be hope in a world where poverty and death are? To be sure, Hughes proposes to eliminate poverty and explain death. You know he thinks—he really believes, I suppose—that if he could once get his millenium going, and everybody so blessed in this life that the absolute knowledge of heavenly conditions in another would not tempt us to suicide, then the terror and the mystery of death would be taken away, and the race would be trusted with its benificent meaning. It’s rather a pretty notion. ”

“ Ray was so startled that for a moment he could not speak. Then he said, hardily, but in the frank spirit of the discussion, “No, I have never thought of them at all.”
“It is time you did,” said Hughes. “All other interests must yield to them. We can have no true art, no real literature, no science worthy the name, till the money-stamp of egoism is effaced from success, and it is honored, not paid.” ”

“ Kane listened with an air of being greatly amused, and even gratified, and Ray thought he had purposely let the old man go on as if he were an author who had already broken the shell. Before he could think of some answer that should at once explain and justify him, Kane interposed:
“I hope Mr. Ray is no better than the rest of us; but he may be; you must make your arraignment and condemnation conditional, at any rate. He’s an author in petto, as yet; Chapley may never publish him.” ”

“ Ray kept silent till he could say coldly, “Nothing. It’s all over.”
Kane stepped into the room, and took off his hat. “If you haven’t been rejected by the object of your affections, you have had the manuscript of your novel declined. These are the only things that really bring annihilation. I think the second is worse. A man is never so absolutely and solely in love with one woman but he knows some other who is potentially lovable; that is the wise provision of Nature. But while a man has a manuscript at a publisher’s, it is the only manuscript in the world. ”

“ Denton talking to her father, joking and laughing. Our common notion of tragedy is that it alters the nature of those involved, as if it were some spiritual chemistry combining the elements of character anew. But it is merely an incident of our being, and, for all we can perceive, is of no more vital effect than many storms in the material world. What it does not destroy, it leaves essentially unchanged. The light creature whom its forces had beaten to the earth, rose again with the elasticity of light things, when it had passed. ”

“ Kane went out, and Brandreth said, “There is one of the most puzzling characters in New York. If he could put himself into a book, it would make his fortune. He’s a queer genius. Nobody knows how he lives; but I fancy he has a little money of his own; his book doesn’t sell fifty copies in a year. What did he mean by that about the travelling-bag?”
Ray explained, and Mr. Brandreth said: “Just like him! He must have spotted you in an instant. He has nothing to do, and he spends most of his time wandering about. He says New York is his book, and he reads it over and over. ”

“ He has taught me at least this, that contempt is of the devil—I beg your pardon, Kane—and I appreciate to the utmost the spiritual grandeur of the man’s nature. But practically, I don’t follow him. We shall never redeem the world by eschewing it. Society is not to be saved by self-outlawry. The body politic is to be healed politically. ”

“ Men’s advance in these relations is rapid, even in later life; in youth it is by bounds. Before a week of their daily contact was out, Ray knew that Mrs. Chapley, though the best soul in the world, and the most devoted of mothers and grandmothers, had, in Mr. Brandreth’s opinion, a bad influence on his wife, and through her on his son. She excited Mrs. Brandreth by the long visits she paid her; and she had given the baby medicine on one occasion at least that distinctly had not agreed with it. ”

“ Denton, whimsically, “is so high-principled that he won’t let us urge on the millenium by having pandemonium first. If we were allowed to do that, Ansel might quiet his conscience by reflecting that the more men he threw out of work, the sooner the good time would come. I don’t see why that isn’t a good plan, and it would work in so nicely with what we want to do. Just make everything so bad people cannot bear it, and then they will rise up in their might and make it better for themselves. Don’t you think so, Mr. Ray?” ”

“ He hailed the unknown writer of A Modern Romeo as the champion of the imaginative and the ideal against the photographic and the commonplace, and he expressed a pious joy in the novel as a bold advance in the path that was to lead forever away from the slough of realism. But he put on a philosophic air in making the reader observe that it was not absolutely a new departure, a break, a schism; it was a natural and scientific evolution, it was a development of the spiritual from the material ”

“ Brandreth began cheerfully.
“About my outliving my book?” Ray asked. “Thank you. There’s all the truth in the world in it.”
“I don’t mean that, of course. I mean the chances{339} that it will pick up any time within three months, and make its fortune.”
“You’re counting on a lucky accident.”
“Yes, I am. I’ve done everything I can to push the book, and now we must trust to luck. You have to trust to luck in the book business, in every business. Business is buying on the chance of selling at a profit. The political economists talk about the laws of business; but there are no laws of business. ”

“ I have merely represented the facts in regard to them, and have left the imagination free to deal with the ideal city as a contrast, with its peaceful streets, cleanly and quiet, its stately ranks of beautiful dwellings, its noble piles of civic and religious architecture, its shaded and colonnaded avenues, its parks and gardens, and all planned and built, not from the greed and the fraud of competition, but from the generous and unselfish spirit of emulation, wherein men join to achieve the best instead of separating to get the most. ”

“ I’m glad for Brandreth here, but I shall be dead by that time.”
“Oh no! Oh no!” Kane softly entreated, while he took Ray’s hand between his two hands. “One doesn’t really die of disappointed literature any more than one dies of disappointed love. That is one of the pathetic superstitions which we like to cherish in a world where we get well of nearly all our hurts, and live on to a hale old imbecility. Depend upon it, my dear boy, you will survive your book at least fifty years.” Kane wrung Ray’s hand, and got himself quickly away. ”

“ They had a courage in their risks which he came to share in its gayety, if not its irreverence, and he enjoyed the cheerful cynicism with which they philosophized the facts of the newspaper side of their trade: they had studied its average of successes and failures, and each of them had his secret for surprising the favor of the managing editor, as infallible as the gambler’s plan for breaking the bank at Monaco.
“You don’t want to be serious,” one blithe spirit volunteered for Ray’s instruction in a moment of defeat; “you want to give a light and cheerful cast to things. ”

“ Denton gave no sign of having heard her. He fixed his troubled eyes on Ray. “Do you know that poem?” he asked, handing him the open book.
“Oh, yes,” said Ray.
“It’s a mistake,” said Denton, “all a mistake. I should like to write to Tennyson and tell him so. I’ve thought it out. The true sacrifice would have been the best, not the dearest; the best.”
The next day was Sunday, and it broke, with that swift, capricious heat of our climate, after several days of cloudy menace. The sun shone, and the streets were thronged with people. ”

“ There was no faltering in her voice, and its steadiness strengthened Ray, standing so close to one who stood so close to death.
“Does he—your father—know?”
“I can’t tell. He is always so hopeful. And Jenny won’t hear of giving up. She is with him more than I am, and she says he has a great deal of strength yet. He can still work at his book a little. He has every part of it in mind so clearly that he can tell her what to do when he has the strength to speak. The worst is, when his voice fails him—he gets impatient. That was what brought on his hemorrhage to-day.” ”

“ The earth closed over the hapless wretch for whom the dream of duty tormenting us all, more or less, had turned to such a hideous nightmare, and those whom his death threatened even more than his life drew consciously or unconsciously a long breath of freedom. ”

“ Ray blushed and laughed, and Kane continued:
“It’s a little beyond the fact, but it’s on the lines of{133} truth. I don’t justify Nature altogether. She is not free from certain little foibles, caprices; perhaps that’s why we call her she. But I don’t think that, with all her faults, she’s quite so bad as Business. In that we seem to have gone to Nature for her defects. Why copy her weakness and bad faith? Why not study her steadfastness, her orderliness, her obedience, in laying the bases of civilization? ”

“ Kane began.
Ray would not be stopped. But he suddenly caught the humorous aspect of his adventure with the editor of Every Evening, and gave it with artistic zest. He did not spare his ridiculous hopes or his ridiculous pangs.
From time to time Kane said, at some neat touch: “Oh, good!” “Very good!” “Capital!” “Charming, charming!” When Ray stopped, he drew a long breath, and sighed out: “Yes, I know the man. He’s not a bad fellow. He’s a very good fellow.”
“A good fellow?” Ray demanded. “Why did he behave like a brute, then? He’s the only man who’s been rude to me in New York. ”

“ Ray’s thought darted almost instantly to his own book, and ran it over in every part, seeking whether there might be something in it that was too bold for a timid publisher, or a timid publisher’s professional readers. He was aware of old Hughes monologuing on with the satisfaction of an author who speaks of his work to a listener he has at his mercy.
“My book is a criticism of modern life in all its aspects, though necessarily as the field is so vast, I can touch on some only in the most cursory fashion. For instance, take this whole architectural nightmare that we call a city. ”

“ He said, as a man does when tempted a little beyond prudence by the pleasure he is giving:
“The fact is, I’ve been thinking about that work of yours, myself. I want to try some novel for the summer trade; and I want you to let me see it again. I want to read it myself this time. They say a publisher oughtn’t to know anything about the inside of a book, but I think we might make an exception of yours.” Ray’s face remained unchanged, and Mr. Brandreth now asked, with a sudden perception of its strangeness: “Hello! What’s the matter? Anything gone wrong with you?” ”

“ Thank you!” said Ray.{129}
“You would call them a crew, then? Perhaps they were a crew,” said Kane. “I don’t know why a reformer should be so grotesque; but he is, and he is always the easy prey of caricature. I couldn’t help feeling to-day how very like the burlesque reformers the real reformers are. And they are always the same, from generation to generation. For all outward difference, those men and brethren of both sexes at poor David’s were very like a group of old-time abolitionists conscientiously qualifying themselves for tar and feathers. ”

“ Without the shedding of blood: what does that mean? If it was a sin for me to invent my process, how shall the sin be remitted?”
“There is that abject nonsense of his again!” said old Hughes, in a hoarse undertone which drowned for Ray some further words from Denton. “It’s impossible to get him away from that idea. Men have nothing to do with the remission of sins; it is their business to cease to do evil! But you might as well talk to a beetle!” ”

“ Brandreth. “That is, if the tragedy is intense enough. Sometimes a thing of that kind takes with the public, if the love part is good and strong. Have you the manuscript here in New York with you?”
“I have it here in my lap with me,” said Ray, with a desperate laugh.
Mr. Brandreth cast his eye over the package. “What do you call it? So much depends upon a title with the public.”
“I had thought of several titles: the hero’s name for one; the heroine’s for another. Then I didn’t know but A Modern Romeo would do. It’s very much on the lines of the play.” ”

“ The next time Ray came, he found Denton dreamily picking at the strings of a violin which lay in his lap; the twins were clinging to his knees, and moving themselves in time to the music. “You didn’t know Ansel was a musician?” his wife said. “He’s just got a new violin—or rather it’s a second-hand one; but it’s splendid, and he got it so cheap.”
“I profited by another man’s misfortune,” said Denton. “That’s the way we get things cheap.”
“Oh, well, never mind about that, now. Play the ‘Darky’s Dream,’ won’t you, Ansel? I wish we had our old ferry-boat darky here to whistle!” ”

“ He pottered out on the landing, and Ray heard him feeling his way carefully down stairs. It was an immense relief for him to have met Mr. Chapley there. It stamped his own presence in the place with propriety; he was fond of adventure and hungry for experience, but he wished all his adventures and experiences to be respectable. He had a young dread of queerness and irregularity; and he could not conceal from himself that but for Mr. Chapley his present environment was not in keeping with his smooth Philistine traditions. He had never been in an apartment before, much less a mere tenement ”

“ He had heard that you were sure to meet somebody you knew whenever you stepped out on Broadway, and he figured meeting them, in fancy. He had decided to put them into his story of New York life, and he tried to imagine the character he should assign them, or rather one of them; the one who had given the old darkey a quarter out of his dollar. He did not quite know what to do with the child; something could be made of the child if it were older, but a mere baby like that would be difficult to manage in such a story as Ray meant to write. ”

“ The question gave Ray a chance to vent his vexation impersonally. “What is the matter with the world?” he burst out. “I don’t see that the world is so very sick. Why isn’t it going on very well? I don’t understand what this talk is all about. I don’t see what those people have got to complain of. All any one can ask is a fair chance to show how much his work is worth, and let the best man win. What’s the trouble? Where’s the wrong?”
“Ah,” said Kane, “what a pity you didn’t set forth those ideas when Hughes called upon you!” ”

“ And when you offered him your novel, Mr. Ray, did Mr. Brandreth say that the book trade was rather dull, just now?”
“Something of that kind,” Ray admitted, with a laugh; and Mr. Brandreth laughed too.
“I’m glad of that,” said Mr. Kane. “It would not have been perfect without that. They always say that. I’ve no doubt the publishers of Memphis and Nineveh said it in their day. It is the publishers’ way with authors. It makes the author realize the immense advantage of getting a publisher on any terms at such a disastrous moment, and he leaves the publisher to fix the terms. It is quite right. ”

“ I fancy the conditions of society are incomparably different in Midland and in New York. You seem to me a race of shepherds and shepherdesses out there; your pretty world is like a dream of my own youth, when Boston was still only a large town, and was not so distinctly an aoristic Athens as it is now.”
“I had half a mind to go to Boston with my book first,” said Ray. “But somehow I thought there were more chances in New York.{82}”
“There are certainly more publishers,” Kane admitted. “Whether there are more chances depends upon how much independent judgment there is among the publishers. ”