Masterman and Son Part 19

A fortnight after his first interview with Legion, he returned to the office of the literary agent, resolved to act upon his discovery.

The great man received him with friendliness, for it was one of his principles never to offend any one who might prove a valuable client at some future date.

"Ah! so you've come back," he began. "You've been studying our remarkable city, eh? And you've met some of our most remarkable men, no doubt?"

"I've certainly met some remarkable men."

"Yes, sir. New York has more remarkable men to the acre than any other city in the world. Genius has made its abode in Manhattan. 'Westward the course of Empire'--you know the rest. Paris and London must go down--they are old. New York will rule the world. Don't you think so?"

"I am afraid I have not thought upon the subject at all."

"No? Well, no doubt you've been absorbing the atmosphere of our wonderful city. That's a very wise step, for a novelist. Sampson E.

Dodge always insisted on atmosphere. Have you written anything yet, any little thing that I can place for you?"

"I have written nothing, and I think I ought to tell you that I am not a novelist."

"Not a novelist! But, my dear sir, why then did your friend Vickars send you to me?"

"I suppose he did it out of consideration for me, Mr. Legion. Will you allow me to say that it is time we understood one another. I am not a novelist, not even a writer in your sense of the term. I am a young man with an excellent education, a good university degree, and a wide a.s.sortment of unmarketable knowledge. I believe that exhausts the statement of my a.s.sets, unless I add good health and a strong desire to live as honestly as I can. Upon the debit side of the account I must ask you to enter a total ignorance of business, which has been so carefully cultivated that it approaches the dignity of a fine art. I may further add that toward what is generally understood by business I entertain an invincible repugnance."

"Dear me!" interrupted Legion, "that is a most extraordinary statement."

"It has, at least, the merit of truth."

"And are there many young men like yourself in the Old Country, sir?"

"They are an innumerable army, which is constantly recruited by the credulous pride of parents who prefer accomplishments to efficiency.

They call the process making their sons gentlemen."

"And what becomes of them?"

"Those who have money spend a vacuous existence in the pursuit of strenuous idleness; those who have no money and some remains of self-respect occasionally emigrate, as I have done. And that brings me to my point, Mr. Legion. I have been long enough in your remarkable city to understand that there is a welcome for the man who can do things, and for no one else. I don't flatter myself that I can do anything of much account, but I am willing to work, and I believe I am willing to learn. To be very plain, I need employment, and I ask you to give it me."

"Well, I like your honesty," said Legion. "But I think better of you than you do of yourself. A man of your splendid education must be able to write. Now, I'll tell you what--you go away and write me a descriptive sketch of your friend Vickars, and if it's the right kind of stuff I'll use it in the papers."

This seemed a feasible project at least. He went away and wrote the essay upon Vickars, and because he wrote in a spirit of genuine love and admiration, he wrote well.

On the following Sunday Legion invited him to his house in New Jersey, where he had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Legion family. His most immediate impression was of a Legion shorn of his beams, so to speak: no longer the arbiter of fame for struggling authors, but a singularly humble individual, whose authority in his own household was dubious and disputed. The real ruler of the household appeared to be that exceedingly smart boy, Ulysses E. Legion, whose self-confidence would have done credit to an aged diplomat whose voice had for half a century swayed the councils of kings and statesmen. He talked incessantly, making no scruple to express his views on a great variety of subjects, in such a way as to indicate that his father was mistaken in most of his opinions. At the dinner-table this young gentleman advised his father how to carve the joint, and directed him with unblus.h.i.+ng precision toward the special t.i.t-bits which he himself preferred. To see the great literary agent humbly obeying these directions, or listening with extreme docility to the opinions of this young patriarch of twelve, was a striking revelation of the amiability of the American parent. Of the qualities revealed in the child perhaps the less said the better. Yet it was to this young gentleman that Arthur owed a considerable advance in the esteem of Mr. Legion. It is one of the unpleasing characteristics of the American house to dispense with doors between the various living-rooms, and thus many things may be overheard that are not meant for general circulation. The parlour in Mr. Legion's house being divided from the dining-room by nothing more substantial than a flimsy curtain, Arthur could not avoid hearing a conversation which took place between the father and son after dinner.

"Say pop," said the boy, "is he a Britisher?"

"Why, yes, he comes from London."

"We always licked the Britishers, didn't we?"

To which the father replied with the popular mendacity which is taught in all American histories, "Of course, Americans have never been defeated."

"Well, I thought he was American. He looks like an American, any way."

This unsolicited testimonial to his personal appearance evidently impressed Mr. Legion, for when he returned to the dining-room there was a marked increase of geniality in his manner.

"And now let me hear what you've written about your friend," he said.

Arthur produced his ma.n.u.script, and began to read. It was an admirable paper, an uncoloured and just statement of his friend's aim and method, which a discerning critic would have readily recognised as excellent writing. It seemed, however, to produce a totally different impression on Mr. Legion. Looking up, Arthur saw the geniality fading from his face, and something like consternation displacing it. The moment he finished the reading, Legion spoke.

"My dear sir," he began, "it won't do--it won't do at all. It might suit your dull old English papers, but for the bright, smart, up-to-date American periodical, it won't do at all."

"What's wrong with it?" said Arthur, with a blush.

"Why, the trouble is, it's all wrong. Our readers don't want to know about the man's books, they want to know something about _him_.

Couldn't you tell us how he looks, and what coloured ties he wears, and what he eats and drinks and how much he earns, and something about that interesting daughter of his? That's what our readers like, sir--bright, personal, spicy, snappy details. And look here, you haven't said a word about his having had a fever through bad drains.

You might have worked that up, any way--how he lived among the poor on purpose to study their lives, and got the fever doing it, and that sort of stunt. You ought to have made him romantic and picturesque, and worked his lovely daughter in, and then people would have begun to ask about his books."

"I'm sorry, but that's not the English way of writing."

"English--nothing! You're in America now, and you must write the American way. I did hope for something better. You can write--I won't deny that--and you look smart enough to write any way you darn please.

My boy Ulysses saw that at once. He said to me, 'Pop, he looks like an American.' And so you do, for my boy Ulysses is rarely mistaken, and yet you haven't got the first idea how to write the American way. What are those old colleges of yours for, any way, if they can't teach you to write livelier stuff that that?"

It was impossible to be angry with the man, for it was clear that his consternation was genuine and unaffected. And it was equally clear to Arthur that he meant well by him. To have argued literary ethics with Mr. Legion would have been the vainest of pursuits. This became evident a moment later, when the literary agent, following the suggestion opened up by the inability of the British colleges to impart the art of smart writing, gave some reminiscences of his own career in that spirit of innocent boastfulness which is common among men who have miraculously achieved positions for which nature never intended them.

"What I can't understand," he remarked, "is why it is you young fellows who have all the chances don't know how to use them properly. Now, look at me. I never had what may be rightly called a chance at all.

I've worked for my bread since I was ten years old. I've been all sorts of things, clerk in a store, drummer on the roads, rail-roading, land-speculating, newspaper reporting, more things than I could count on my ten fingers. I never had time to ask what I wanted to do; I had to do what came to me, and do it the way those that paid me wanted it done. There was never anything superior about me, and I knew it. And that's why I've got on. That's why all the writers come to me to-day.

They know very well I can't write worth a red cent, not compared with them, that is. But I've lived among the people all my life, and I know what they want. And if you'll take a word of advice from me, you'll just set yourself to find out what people like, and give it 'em hot and strong, and then you'll succeed fast enough."

"It is excellent advice--if one could take it."

"And what's to prevent you?" he cried. "You've got good looks, you've got education, you've got ability. I'll tell you what I'll do. You come to my office for a couple of weeks, and be ready to do what I tell you. I'll pay you what I think just, and if you don't like it, you're under no obligation to remain."

"I'll come with pleasure," Arthur replied; "and whether I please you or not, I shall always be grateful to you for your kindness."

"Oh! that's nothing. I was a young cub myself once, and I shouldn't have been here now if some one hadn't licked me into shape."

It was not exactly a pleasant way of putting things, but Arthur had sense enough to perceive that it was uttered in a spirit of rough kindness. He believed himself quite incapable of moulding his mind to Mr. Legion's pattern, and it was with a sense of ingrat.i.tude that he found himself secretly despising that pattern. But a fortnight of New York had taught him this much, that beggars cannot be choosers, and, moreover, Mr. Legion's door was the only door that stood open to him.

He could at least try to do what was asked of him, and in the secret of his heart pride whispered that he might even succeed in elevating Mr.

Legion's sense of literary merit, and impart to it a dignity which it conspicuously lacked.

He went to the office on the following morning. To his surprise he found himself introduced to a typewriting lady not at all as an unfortunate person who had failed to master the American method of writing, but as "one of our brightest and smartest young men, who is destined to become one of the star writers of our time"; from which it appeared that Mr. Legion had already forgotten his demerits, or had yielded to that spirit of innocent effusiveness which was characteristic of his usual modes of speech. The typewriting lady had heard such phrases too often to attach much importance to them, and received them with a wearied smile. She readjusted the combs in her hair, nodded to him coldly, and went on with her work unmoved by the presence of this bright particular star of Mr. Legion's firmament.

Later on, when Mr. Legion had left the office, this inaccessible lady thawed a little, and informed him with a pretty grimace that she guessed that a good many stars rose and set every month in Broadway.

"You must take no notice of Mr. Legion's superlatives," he replied.

"I don't."

"I am here only as a learner, a kind of apprentice."

"Then I guess you'll get some surprises."

Surprises he certainly did get in plenty in the course of that eventful fortnight. He found, for example, that Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, in common with most of Mr. Legion's authors, always wrote the preliminary press announcements of his novels himself, in which he declared his profound conviction that the present novel was the best he had ever written, ever could write, ever would write, being dramatic in a high degree, racy of the soil, full of vigorous situations, and worthy of the highest traditions of American fictional art. As if this were not enough, Mr. Dodge's humble statements of his own powers were further embroidered with resonant superlatives by the skilled hand of Legion himself, who lavished on him praise that would have sounded excessive had it been applied to Walter Scott or Victor Hugo. The whole thing was so humorous in its gross exaggeration that one day, in a spirit of mockery, Arthur drew up a description of the works of Dodge in which he outdid his model, ending with the statement that the day would come when America would be remembered in history chiefly as the birthplace of the famous author of _The Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels_. This burlesque, left carelessly upon his desk, fell into the hands of Legion, who, to his intense surprise, congratulated him upon it.