CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW OF SUCCESS
I was killing my chief priest in a blaze of glory when Anastasia invaded the room that between meals is called my bureau, at meals the salle-à-manger, in the evening the salon.
“Don’t speak to me,” I cried; “I’m at a critical point.”
With which I ran my fingers through my hair, took hold of my teeming skull with both hands, and glared fiercely at the blank sheet of paper in my typewriter. With a look almost of awe the wife of the great author tip-toed out again.
About an hour after, having duly been delivered of my great thoughts, I rejoined her. “What is it?” I asked kindly.
“Oh, darleen, I have letter from my muzzaire. She want us have dinner on Sunday. What must I say?”
“Say yes, of course. The old lady wants to give us her consent and her blessing. Incidentally, a handsome dot for you. Shouldn’t wonder if she’d taken a shine to me after all.”
“Any one take shine to such lovely sing like you, darleen; but I don’t know about my muzzaire. Well, I write and tell her we come. Oh, and anuzzer sing, I have seen Rougette this morning. She look so happy. She have come out of the hôpital, and she tell me she get married with Monsieur Lorrimer, July. You nevaire knew she have been burn. It is all down her neck and shoulder. You cannot see.”
“I’m so glad. They say beauty is only skin-deep, but it’s deep enough to change the destiny of nations. Who would not rather be born beautiful than good? Why was I not born beautiful?”
“You are, darleen. You are just beautiful, and what is better, you are great writer.”
(I’m afraid Anastasia sees me with the eyes of posterity.)
“Well, now,” I went on, “I must try and bring off that triangular marriage scheme of mine. We’ll fix it all up with my belle-mère on Sunday, and in the meantime I’ll go out and see the others.”
So I set forth in high spirits. Everything was going beautifully it seemed; and when a few moments later I happened on Monsieur Bébérose issuing from his apartment, I beamed on him, and he beamed in return. He was dressed with more care than usual; a hemispherical figure in a frock coat and tall hat. He was anxiously trying to get a new pair of lavender kid gloves on his podgy hands without splitting them, and the imperial that gave distinction to his series of crisp chins had been trimmed and brilliantined. Plainly Monsieur Bébérose had dressed for no ordinary occasion, and chaffingly I told him so.
“Ah, no! Ah, no!” he admitted coyly. “I go to give a déjeûner to my future belle-mère at the Café Anglais.”
“Ha! Who is it? Juliette or Lucille?”
“Oh, neither,” he said, with the archness of a baby elephant. “It is a new one. I think I will be satisfied this time.”
“Is she a widow?”
“No; but her mother is; and an old friend of mine.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Pretty; only twenty and with some money.”
“Ah! young, charming and with a comfortable dot; what could be more delightful? Allow me to congratulate you, my friend. How you must dream of her!”
“Truly, yes; day and night. She is adorable. She melts in the mouth.”
“What a lucky dog you are! I’m dying to see her.”
“But I have not seen her myself yet. I have just seen the mother. Ah! I will have that pleasure in a few days though. Then it is she return from the friend with whom she is visiting.”
“Well, I wish you luck. I hope your troubles are at an end.”
How pleasant it was, I thought, to see all these wild creatures of the ranges being rounded up into the blissful corral of matrimony! How comforting, after one’s own feathers have been trimmed, to see others joining the ranks of the wing-clipped! Love should not be represented as a rosy Cupid, but as a red-jowled recruiting sergeant. True, I have one of the best wives in the world; yet, what man is there, who, if he has ever roved the Barbary coasts of Philander Land, does not once in a while sigh for the old freedom? Marriage is a constraint to be good, against which the best of us feel moments of faint, futile rebellion.
Sometimes I wished that Anastasia was not so desperately practical. She seems to consider that I am a species of great child, and must be looked after accordingly. I am an ardent suffragist; I have always advocated the rights of woman; I have always believed in her higher destiny; I scoff at the idea that woman’s sphere is the home, and desire to see her marching shoulder to shoulder with man in the ranks of progress. Yet, alas! I cannot make a convert of Anastasia.
Often I have tried to interest her in the burning question; to inspire in her a sense of having a mission, of being oppressed; but Anastasia only laughs softly. She seems to have the ridiculous and old-fashioned idea that her duty is to make me happy, to surround me with comfortable routine, to remove from my daily path all irritating and distracting protuberances. I have left, with elaborate carelessness on her kitchen table, enough feminist literature to convert a dozen women. But Anastasia only rearranges it neatly, props an open cook-book against it, and studies some new recipe for stuffing duck.
“Ah, no,” she would say. “I must not waste my time reading. That is not serious of me. I have my ménage, my marketing, my sewing,— Oh, so much to do! If I threw away my time reading, my Lovely One might have holes in his socks; and just think what a shame that would be for me!”
Yes, it is sad to relate, but I believe if I had offered her the choice between a new hat and the vote she would take the hat.
How often have I wished she had more individuality! Her idea seems to be to mould her nature to mine, so that every day she becomes more like a faithful shadow. How anxiously she watches me as I eat my soup, so afraid it may not be to my taste! How cheerful, how patient, how eager to please she is! Oh, for a flare of temper sometimes, a sign of spirit, something to show that she is a woman of character, of originality! But no. Her duty, as she conceives it, is to minister to my material comfort, to see that I enjoy my food, to make me wrap up sufficiently. Yet in these things she is rather tyrannical, insisting on my coming home to my meals at the hour I have decided on, emphatic that I change my socks at least twice a week, indignant if I brush my hair after putting on my coat. However, she keeps my things in beautiful order, and although I feel at times that she is a little exacting I yield with good grace. After all, one ought to consider one’s wife sometimes.
On the other hand, I have insisted on some concessions on her part that are revolutionary to the French mind—that of sleeping with the window open, for instance. I over-ruled her objection that the snow and rain entering during the night, spoiled her parquet. She keeps it beautifully polished, by the way, and claims that the shining of it every day gives her enough exercise without the Swedish gymnastics I insist on her taking under my direction. But I am so anxious she should keep slim and lissom, and the exercises are certainly effective.
But another matter is beginning to occupy my mind and to give me a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. This is the apparent success of Tom, Dick and Harry. About a month ago I received my six presentation copies. MacWaddy and Wedge had done their work well. The cover was stirring in the extreme. An American publicity man on his probation had seized on it as a medium for his first efforts. It was advertised in the weekly, and even in the daily papers; a royal princess was announced as having included it in her library, and more or less picturesque paragraphs about the author began to go the round of the press. The imaginative efforts of the publicity man were not stultified by any sordid knowledge of his subject.
Then press clippings began to come in. A great many of these were a repetition of the puff on the paper wrapper, which I had written myself, and therefore were favourable. But the reviewers who read the books they review did not let me down so easily. The Times was tolerant; The Academy acidulous; The Spectator severe. On the whole, however, my début was decidedly successful. Nearly all concluded by saying that “despite its obvious faults, the faults of a beginner, its crudeness, its obviousness, its thinness of character-drawing, this first book of Silenus Starset showed more than the average promise, and his future work should be looked forward to with some expectation.”
I gave copies to Helstern and Lorrimer, and they were both enthusiastic in that tolerant way one’s friends have of applauding one’s performances.
“For a first novel, it’s wonderful,” said the sculptor.
“You’re a marvel for a beginner,” said the artist.
These back-handed compliments rather discounted my pleasure. On the other hand, Anastasia, who read it with rapture, thought it the most wonderful production since “Les Misérables.” She hugged and treasured it as if it were something rarely precious, and verily I believe if she had been asked to choose between it and the Bible she would have chosen Tom, Dick and Harry.
Yes, it had all the appearance of success, and yet I was, in a way, disappointed. It was the equal of my other work—no better, no worse. It had the same fresh, impetuous spirit, the same wheedling, human quality, the same light-hearted ingenuity. It had the points that made for popularity: yet I had hoped to strike a truer note. I had a fatal faculty for success. I began to fear that I was doomed irrevocably to be a best-sellermonger.
Well, it must be as the public willed. I could only write in the way that was natural to me. Still I hoped that in The Great Quietus I would show that I could aspire to better things. There were opportunities in it for idyllic description, for the display of imagination. I would try to rise to this new occasion.
So I was deep in the book the following Sunday morning when Anastasia reminded me it was the day we had promised to dine with her mother. The old lady, she said, had asked her to go in the afternoon and help to prepare dinner. Would I follow about six in the evening? I promised, glad to get the extra time on my manuscript.
About six, then, I looked up from my work; suddenly remembered the important engagement, and rushed on my best garments. I called a taxi and told the chauffeur to stop at the beginning of the street. Anastasia, if she saw me, would give me a lecture on extravagance.
The house was in the rue Montgolfier, up five flights. I knocked and Anastasia answered the door. She looked as if she had been crying. There was a sound of conversation from an interior room, where I saw a table set for dinner, with the red checked table-cloth beloved of the bourgeois.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered.
“Oh, I’m so glad you come. Wat you think she want, that bad muzzaire of me? She ask another man here and she want that I leave you and marry him. He is quite rich, and she say she geeve me twenty tousand francs for dot. All afternoon she discute with me. She tell me I always am poor wiz you, and nevaire have much confort. And then she say you are stranger and some day you leave me. She tell me the uzzer man geeve me automobile and I will be very grand. And what you sink? When I say no, no, no, I nevaire, nevaire leeve you, she say she geeve you two tousand francs and you geeve me up like nothing. Oh, I ’ave awful, awful time.”
“I don’t care two pins for your mother,” I said. “But where’s the other party to this arrangement? Where’s the damned Frenchman? I’m going to knock his face in.”
Suddenly Madame Guinoval appeared, wearing a black satin robe that crackled on her and threatened to burst with every movement of her swelling muscles. The slightly moustached mouth was grim as a closed trap, and the red face was flushed and angry looking.
I was furious, but I tried to be calm.
“Madam,” I said, “Anastasia has just told me all. You are her mother so I do not express my opinion of you, but,” I added in a voice of thunder, “where is the sacred pig who wants to steal away my wife?”
There was a movement of alarm from the dining-room.
“Because here’s where I show,” I went on, “that an American is equal to two Frenchmen. Let me get at the brute.”
Anastasia clung to me, begging me to be calm, but Madame Guinoval was haughtily intrepid.
“Hegesippe! Hegesippe!” she cried, “come out and show this coquin you are a brave man.”
There was no alacrity on the part of Hegesippe, so the lady entered and fairly boosted him to the front. I stared; I gasped; my hands dropped; for the suitor, looking very much alarmed indeed, was little Monsieur Bébérose.
“Well,” I said, “you’re a fine man to try and steal a friend’s wife.”
It was now the turn of Anastasia and Madame Guinoval to gasp, for Monsieur Bébérose burst away from the grasp of the latter and rushing to me began to stammer a flood of apologies. He was so sorry; he had not known how things were; he had been deceived. “It was that woman had deceived him,” he said dramatically, pointing to Madame Guinoval.
“That woman” retorted by a terrible calm, a calm more menacing than any storm, a calm pregnant with withering contempt.
“Out of my house,” she said at last; “out, out, you sale goujat!” And Monsieur Bébérose needed no second bidding. He grabbed his hat from the rack and his cane from the stand and vanished. Then the virago turned to us. Going into the bedroom she brought Anastasia’s coat and hat. She ignored me utterly.
“Do you still,” she said, “intend to remain with this man?”
Anastasia nodded a determined head, at which the mother threw the coat and hat at her feet.
“Then go, and never let me see your face again. Never will I give my consent to your marriage in France. May my tongue wither if I ever give it.”
“Put on your hat outside,” I said to Anastasia, and pushed her out. Then I turned to the woman:
“It does not matter,” I hissed. “You’re a devil. You’ve tried to play a dirty game, but it won’t do. And now listen to me.”
Then I took a step towards her and adopted the manner of a stage villain. My face was apparently convulsed with rage, and my raised lips showed my teeth in a vicious snarl. It was most effective. I vow the woman shrank back a moment.
“I’ll pay you out, you harridan. I’ll make you smart for this. Nobody ever did me a bad turn but what I did them a worse. Beware, Madame, beware. I will have my revenge.”
I slammed the door in her face. Then I laughed loud and long.
“I say! it’s all awfully funny, Little Thing. Now let’s go and have some dinner in place of the one we should have had with your mother.”
When we got home that night, another matter claimed my attention. On opening The Bookman, which had arrived that morning, I found therein a well-displayed advertisement of Tom, Dick and Harry. There was half a column of press extracts carefully culled and pruned, the evil of them having in some inexplicable way evaporated. But, oh, wonderful fact that made me scratch my head thoughtfully! in bracketed italics was the announcement: Seventh Impression. There was no guessing how many copies went to an impression. If the publishers were boosting up the number of editions by printing only five hundred copies at a time this did not mean much. But it was hardly likely. In any case it did not look as if MacWaddy and Wedge were losing money over their venture.
The result was that next morning I read over my contract with them. Thank goodness! I still had the American rights; so by the first post I wrote to Widgeon & Co., the literary agents, putting the matter in their hands. There was a reply by return saying that there were several representatives of American firms in London at that time, and that they would get in touch with them without delay.
The following day there came a telegram: “Messrs. Liverwood & Son offer to publish book on fifteen per cent. royalty basis. Will we accept. Widgeon.”
I immediately wired back: “Accept for immediate publication.”
Well, that was off my mind anyway. A few days after, I got a letter from MacWaddy & Wedge saying that they hoped to have a new book from me soon. What were the prospects, they wanted to know, of me being able to let them have it for their autumn lists? In which case they would begin an advertising campaign right away. I wrote back that my affairs were now in the hands of Widgeon & Co. and that all business would be done through them.
A week went past. Every day I had new proof that Tom, Dick and Harry was going well. Then one morning I had a letter from my agents. They had, they said, an opportunity to place a good serial. Would I send them as much of my new book as I had finished and give a synopsis of the rest. I did so, and in three weeks’ time they wrote again to say that the American magazine Uplift had bought the serial rights for a thousand dollars.
That, too, was as satisfactory as it was unexpected. It was like finding the money. Once more I seemed to have entered on the avenue of success that seemed to open up before me in spite of myself. From now on, there would be nothing but monotonous vistas of smooth going. I was doomed to popular applause. Once more would I leap into the lists as a writer of best-sellers. So strongly had I the gift of interesting narrative that I could win half a dozen new reputations; of that I felt sure.
Yes, I had succeeded—no, I mean I had failed, failed by these later lights that Paris had kindled within me. Here, amid art that is eternal, art that means sacrifice, surrender, renunciation, I had learned to despise that work which merely serves the caprice of an hour. I had come to crave form, to strive for style. Yet what can one do? My efforts for art’s sake were artificial and stilted; it was only when I had a story to tell that I became entirely pleasing. Well, let me take my own measure. I would always be a bagman of letters. In that great division of scribes into sheep and goats I would never be other than a bleating and incorrigible goat.