THE AMERICAN MADONNA

XI

NEW YORK

If he had been able to earn his living in any conventional and accepted way, he would not have been on his way to join the S.S. Saurian as she lay off the landing-stage at Southampton on that bright September morning. The poor must needs learn a trade, because a trade is necessary to mere existence; but it is the tragedy of the rich and the semi-rich that, when once deprived of the artificial security of riches, they are helpless.

Arthur had plenty of time to do battle with this afflicting thought as he travelled down to Southampton. It accompanied him, like a voice of irony, in the rushing wheels; flashed upon him in the sentinel telegraph posts, each bearing aloft its spark of silent fire; saluted him from a hundred fields where men stood bare-armed beside the loaded wains; mocked him in casual glimpses of firm faces behind the glass of signal-boxes, in hurrying porters at the points of stoppage, in groups of labourers leaning lightly on spade or mattock, as the train thundered past. In all these faces, common as they were, there was a look of proud efficiency. In every sight and sound was the vindication of human toil. These men, each in his several way, had solved the problem of life. Each had learned to do something which the world wanted done. They did the work required of them, undistracted by problems and philosophies; asked no questions concerning the structure of society or the nature of life; were content to add their stone to the cairn, to pass on and be forgotten, and to earn the final simple elegy, "home have gone and ta'en their wages."

But Arthur—what did he know of this primeval life of man, which had gone on from the dawn of the world, unchanged by change of dynasties, by the readjustment of nations, by the birth and death of a hundred intricate philosophies, literatures, reforms, social experiments, social reconstructions? He knew less than the humblest child who followed the reapers in the field, or began the perilous process of existence by earning casual pence in the mine or factory. Like so many youths in an age when all forms of hand-labour have lost their dignity, he had learned a hundred things which lent a false glamour to existence, but not one which supplied its vital needs. He had accumulated accomplishments, but had not developed efficiencies, as though one should adorn and decorate a machine in which the works were lacking.

"Let me reckon up my capital," he thought as the train rushed on; "let me ascertain my authentic stock-in-trade. I have some knowledge of Greek literature and Roman history, but it is probable that in all this train-load of human creatures there are not half a dozen who would attach the least value to my knowledge. I can decipher old French chronicles with fair success; I know enough of music to understand the theory of counterpoint, and enough of poetry to construct a decent sonnet; and, so far as I can see, these are not commodities which possess any marketable value. I have thirty pounds given me by my mother; but if my life depended upon my earning thirty pence, I know no possible method by which I might wrest the most wretched pittance from the world's closed fist. I am, in fact, an incompetent, but through no fault of my own. It seems that I have been elaborately trained to do a great number of things which no one wants done, but not one of the things for which the world makes eager compensation. What were mere pastime to the savage is to me an inaccessible display of effort; left alone with the whole open world for my kingdom, it is doubtful if I could build a house, grow a potato, bake a loaf, or secure the barest means of life. Such is my deplorable condition that it is possible—no, entirely certain, that the poorest emigrant in this rushing freight of men and women would scruple to change places with me. That's a pretty situation for a gentleman of England and an Oxford graduate, isn't it?"

He smiled mirthlessly at the thought. Yet while it humiliated him, youth asserted its right sufficiently to extract from it a certain flavour of exhilaration. He was at all events coming to grips with the reality of living. He had been like a boy swimming upon bladders; the bladders were now removed, and a potent and tremendous sea throbbed beneath him. Since he could depend no more on artificial aids to life, it followed that life must needs develop its own latent forces. There surely must be such forces in himself, an elemental manhood which must justify itself. There recurred to him a saying of Hilary Vickars. They had been discussing one night the infinite and elusive question of wherein lay the wisdom of life, when Vickars had abruptly said, "Practice is the only teacher. You learn to walk by walking, to swim by swimming, to live by living. The child has no theory about walking: he simply walks, at the price of a thousand tears and bruises. In the same way we must make the experiment of living in order to learn how to live. It is the same with religion. We make the experiment of God before we can find God. The particular folly of men to-day is that they think wisdom comes by talking about wisdom. One honest attempt to do something, however blunderingly, is worth a lifetime of discussion about how it should be done."

"Yet Browning held that the great thing planned was better than the little thing achieved," he had responded.

"Browning also was a talker rather than a doer," Vickars had replied. "He misleads men by the very robustness of his talk into the notion that great dreams can take the place of great actions. Don't let him mislead you. Remember what I say, that the great business of life is to live, not to criticise life."

He remembered the words now, and they acquired new significance as he studied the faces of his comrades. There were four men in the carriage with him, one of them middle-aged, the others mere youths. The middle-aged man had a good, plain, country face, with a fringe of gray whisker; two of the youths were clearly country-bred, the third had the alert look and pallor of the city. The middle-aged man sat in stolid silence, with his big knotted hands folded on his knees; the two country youths watched the flying fields with eagerness; the city youth had produced a zither, on which he was strumming hymn-tunes. "Safe in the arms of Jesus," was the tune he strummed.

"Thank you, sir," said the middle-aged man. "It kind of cheers one up a bit to hear that."

"It's the only tune I really know," said the youth apologetically. "You see, I'm only a beginner."

"My little girl used to sing it. Learned it in a Sunday school at Newcastle. She's dead now."

The simple words had the effect of dissolving the reticence of these chance travellers. They began to talk, and very soon each was relating his history. The two country youths had the least to say. They had heard there was work in America with good pay; in that statement their entire history was comprehended. They had not the least idea of the country they were going to; its very geography was as much a mystery to them as the binomial theorem; they were, in fact, staking everything upon a rumour, and Arthur found their very ignorance at once deplorable and wonderful as an expression of the hopeful courage of the human heart. The London youth was more garrulous, and slightly better informed. It seemed he had a relative who had promised him a place in a small business which he managed near Philadelphia.

"I am a clerk, you know. A man who is a good clerk can always get on in any commercial centre. Except in London. There everything's congested, too many people and not enough work to go round. "England," he pronounced oracularly, "is done. Her day's over."

It seemed the younger men endorsed this verdict with surprising unanimity. Each was a fugitive from an unequal battle. Men could not live on the land, because of high rents and exorbitant taxation; neither could they live in cities, because over-population and excessive competition had reduced wages to starvation point; "England was all very well for the rich—let them live in it as they could—but a poor man couldn't, and that was about the size of it."

"But surely you two could live well enough," said Arthur to the country youths.

"Oh, live—yes," said one; "but what is there at the end of it all? Nothing but the workhouse."

"Yes, that's it," said the middle-aged man slowly, "but there's workhouses in the States, too. Don't you be deceiving of yourselves. England ain't no worse than other places."

"And why are you leaving it then, I'd like to know?" said the London youth.

"Because I've had a trouble, young man."

Arthur's heart warmed toward this unwilling exile. The London youth, with his glib denunciation of England, disgusted him; the two country youths could by no stretch of charity be accounted interesting; but this grave, silent man who had "had a trouble" made an instant appeal to his sympathy. He began to talk with him, and little by little drew his history from him. It seemed his name was Vyse; he was a riveter by trade, had worked in the great shipyards of Clydebank, Newcastle, and Belfast, earning excellent wages, and had acquitted himself with industry and honour. Here was a man who had done something tangible and something that endured. Doubtless at that moment the work of his hands was distributed throughout the world; again and again he had stood silent as the vast hull upon which he had toiled trembled on the slips, took the water, and presently disappeared upon the plains of ocean, there to encounter the strangest diversities of fate, to be buffeted by the vast seas of the North Atlantic or the Horn, to be washed with phosphorescent ripples in the heart of the Pacific or among the coral islands of the South Seas, to fight the ice-floes of the Arctic, or sleep upon the waters of the Amazon. Here, thought Arthur, was the very poetry of labour; these disfigured hands held the threads that bound the world together, and round this plain man lay an horizon as wide as the farthest seas. Unconsciously the man's trade had imparted certain elements of largeness to his mind. He spoke of himself and his prospects with a certain plain dignity and confidence. He knew his value to the world; east or west, he was a needed man, one for whom the gate of labour stood wide open.

"I'll find work, never fear," he said. "I'm not like these boys," he added, with a glance at the two stolid country youths and the London clerk, who still strummed his one tune upon the zither. "They think they'll find life easier in America, and that's all they go for. I would think shame upon myself to emigrate upon such a hope as that. I don't hold with folk as run down England. It's my belief that them as runs down their own country won't be of much good in any other country. I tell you I'm sorry enough to leave England, and I wouldn't do it, except that I have a trouble."

Presently it came out what his trouble was. His wife was dead, and his only son had taken to evil ways. The man could have borne the loneliness of loss, but when the boy robbed and insulted him, proving finally intractable, he made up his mind to start life afresh in a new land where his disgrace could not follow him.

"There's years of work in me yet," he said. "But I can't work properly without a peaceful mind. And there's another thing, I've got to pay back what Charlie took from other folk. I couldn't lift my head up if I didn't. That's right, isn't it, sir?"

"Mr. Vyse," said Arthur, "I wish all of us could show as clean a bill of health as you."

The train was running into Southampton. Beside the landing-stage lay the great ship, which was to receive within a few minutes so many histories and destinies. The steerage was already packed with emigrants, many of them Italians, distinguishable by their gay-coloured clothing. Arthur found, to his delight, that Vyse was billeted with him in a four-berth cabin; the two other tenants were an old horse-dealer from the Western States, and a clergyman's son, going out upon a remittance. The cabin was deep down in the bowels of the ship, dark and airless. He hastened from it to the deck, and found himself in the midst of many farewell groups. Among them was the clergyman's son, who stood superciliously smoking a cigar, with his face averted from his father, who pressed upon him final kindnesses and counsels. "All right, father. It's time for you to go, you know," he said sullenly. "May God bless you, my boy!" said the old man. "Oh, I daresay," said the boy indifferently; and it was so they parted. Some one began to sing "Home, Sweet Home," a singularly inappropriate song in such an hour. A woman shrieking for her husband and her two children was put ashore; it seemed the baby in her arms was afflicted with sarcoma, and was expelled the ship. The brown water showed a sudden strake of white; a soft pulse throbbed somewhere beneath the decks; the screw had made the first of those countless revolutions that would not cease for three thousand miles; and the great vessel glided out upon the long path toward the setting sun.

There are few schools in the world where character can be studied at closer quarters, and certain lessons of life learned more rapidly, than on ship-board. The mere contiguity of a great variety of human creatures is itself a lesson in the real values of life. It was, for instance, an admirable incentive to self-reliance for Arthur to find himself for the first time in a position where he was despised. This incentive was administered daily by groups of gentlemen in ulsters and ladies in elaborate travelling-costumes, who gathered at the rail of the deck above like spectators in a gallery, and gazed down with evident commiseration, and sometimes with sarcastic comment, on the second class passengers. Occasionally these groups would leave their lofty gallery and make excursions through the inferior quarters, with the dainty airs of personally-conducted parties investigating slums, commenting openly as they went upon the manners of the lower deck in a spirit of condescending and cheerful vulgarity. The London clerk, with his eternal zither, was much remarked, and appeared proud of the attention he attracted. On the other hand, men like Vyse received these visits in stolid silence, not wholly free from resentment and contempt. "That's what money does," he said bitterly one day, when a group of these excursionists had retired; and Arthur, reflecting on the circumstance, came to see that the old workman was right in his diagnosis, and that it was a diagnosis shameful to human nature. For it was clear that these people owed their eminence neither to manners nor accomplishments; in solid worth and dignity of character Vyse would have been judged their superior in any equitable court; and, taken man for man, it was merely the better coat and not the better breeding that distinguished the upper from the lower deck.

When it came to kindness, which is the flower of all gentility, the virtues of the lower deck were even more strikingly apparent. On the fourth day out stormy weather was encountered; black, foamless seas rolled in perpetual assault from the north-west; there was an hour when the great ship made but five miles; word went round that the lifeboats were cleared and victualled; and the constant noise of hammers audible in the pauses of the tempest was significant of some damage in the iron walls that lay between them and death. It was then that, amid fear and dreadful discomfort, the virtues of the lower deck displayed themselves. Vyse nursed a sick child with the tenderness of a woman; the cattle-dealer spent the day in telling stories, very far from decorous, it must be admitted, to a group of half-frightened lads, who forgot their fears in their laughter; even the London clerk shone conspicuous with his zither and his eternal "Safe in the arms of Jesus." In the dark and narrow alley-ways, pounded by the threshing seas, whose fearful detonations seemed to fill the air with thunder, the clerk found his mission, and trembling voices sang with pathetic desire of conviction the words that express a faith which lifts the soul beyond the terrors of destruction.

"That is what money does," Vyse had said, and the reflection was inevitable that it did very little after all to benefit character, and not a little to emasculate or degrade it. The people with whom Arthur travelled had no monopoly of virtue, as he was bound to admit; the London clerk in his ordinary mood was a creature at once slight and vain, the horse-dealer was coarse; and so he might have gone through the whole list of his acquaintances, remarking plentiful defect in each. But the qualities were more obvious than the defects. There was a general spirit of helpfulness and kindness; many had grievous accusations, only too authentic, to make against the land from which they fled, but these accusations were rarely made in a spirit of bitterness or envy; all had the cardinal grace of courage, and were willing to believe that at the end of a long road of failure and defeat victory awaited them. It was this unquenchable buoyancy of hope in the crowd of fugitives from an unequal battle which struck Arthur as entirely wonderful and, indeed, heroic. There was not one of them unacquainted with failure in some extreme form; not one who had not heard the bugles of retreat on some disastrous field; yet each, after a brief inspection of the ruined architecture of his life, was ready to begin building anew, each believed himself competent for the task, and each had that rarest form of courage which forgets the past. For one reared as he had been, it was a revelation to be made aware of such virtues lying at the base of very ordinary characters, and a revelation for which he thanked God with devout gratitude. It amounted almost to a discovery of human nature. He had known hitherto little more than a human coterie; he had lived in artificial conditions; and he knew the kind of lives that such conditions bred. Now, for the first time, he touched the primeval; he had joined the company of those whose sole defence and worth lay in their authentic manhood, and he dimly saw that what had seemed a fall in life had been an ascent, for the truly ignoble lay, not below him, but above him. Thus insensibly he drew courage from the fortitude of his companions, and caught from them that spirit of adventure which "street-born" men never know—the spirit which has flung forth the Anglo-Saxon race into every quarter of the globe, and has made them the world's great empire-builders.

On the seventh day out the Atlantic storm-belt, with its miserable monotony of vexed and gloomy seas, was left behind. For a wonder there was no fog upon the Banks; the seas were of an indescribable hue of limpid turquoise, the ship seemed to glide across a far-glimmering floor, and the wind had a tonic sweetness and renewing potency. The blood sang in the veins, the eye took a deeper colour, and among all the fugitives of the lower deck there was not one who did not move with a brisker step. Laughter ran along the deck; a child beating a tin cup with a spoon was the object of general admiration; languid faces smiled, and among the women a fresh ribbon on the hair or a glance of innocent coquettishness in the eye marked the advent of a new zest in life.

Arthur stood against a bulk-head, watching with delighted eyes the bright elusive colours of the sea, varying from the clearest bottle-green where the ship's bulk clove the waters to the deepest purple where a cloud drove its shadow like a chariot across the liquid plain. Vyse stood beside him, his rugged face reddened by the fresh wind.

"Looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he remarked. "The sea somehow makes a man think better of himself."

"Yes," said Arthur. "I feel that too. Life seems larger."

"That reminds me of something I wish to say to you," said Vyse. "You and me's been good friends upon the voyage, and if you won't be offended, I'd like to ask you a question."

"You won't offend me. What is it?"

"I've wondered what you might be going to do when you reached New York."

"Well, to tell you the truth, Vyse, I don't know. I have to begin a new life, but I don't in the least know how."

"I guessed something of the sort. Well, what I wanted to say was this. Men as is Englishmen and has travelled together like you and me should stick together, shouldn't they? Now, I'm only a plain man, and you're a gentleman, but maybe I might help you a bit. I'd like to give you my address. A pal of mine gave it me. And if ever you don't know where to go, come to me, and you'll be kindly welcome."

"I believe I shall," said Arthur simply. "And I thank you from my heart."

The kindness of Vyse touched him more deeply than he could say. It was another evidence of that fine courtesy which exists in all simple natures, and he took it as a fresh assurance of that worth of human nature itself which he had discovered on the voyage.

Two days later Fire Island was passed, the long flat shore of Long Island lay like a yellow line drawn across the water, and in the afternoon the screw ceased from its long labour, and the ship lay at rest off Sandy Hook. The harbour with its green bluffs, studded with lawns and white verandahed houses, opened up; the tremendous battlements of New York bulked against the distant skyline; and in the foreground, like a colossal watcher of the gate, strode the Statue of Liberty.

"Look," said Vyse, nudging Arthur's arm and pointing to the bows, where a multitude of emigrants stood at gaze.

And in truth it was a scene not easily forgotten. Yellow-haired Scandinavians, with something of the old Viking stature and clear resoluteness of eye, watched the unfolding scene; Hungarians in embroidered jackets gathered in a separate group; Danes, Germans, and Russians were there, all silent with an emotion which might have been apprehension or anticipation; but in the foreground, the unconscious centre of all eyes, knelt a group of Italian men and women. They were crossing themselves devoutly, their ecstatic eyes raised to the gigantic figure of Liberty with her lamp.

"What are they doing?" said Arthur, and he found himself whispering as though he waited in some dim cathedral for the elevation of the Host.

"They call that there Statue of Liberty the American Madonna, so they tell me," said Vyse.

The reply thrilled him as the whisper of the oracle might have thrilled the worshippers long since beneath the oaks of Dodona. The American Madonna, the calm-faced Mother standing at the gates of empire with impartial welcome, her uplifted torch lighting her new-found children to the path of novel destinies—there was a sacramental virtue in the thought, and it shone through his mind like a heavenly omen.

"Ave Madonna!" cried the kneeling group, each with eyes fixed upon that lofty brow of bronze, as if they expected instantly the face to quicken with a human tenderness, the head to stoop in condescending grace.

Perhaps it did. In that clear and sunny air the face appeared to smile, and from the outstretched hand there came to each humble suppliant the veritable grace of hope.

And then the moment passed; the ship moved on; from a Titanic structure, pierced with many windows, a babel of voices clashed upon the still air, and in another half hour the ship, her long voyage done, swung slowly to her berth.

XII

MR. WILBUR MEREDITH LEGION

Were a man never so lonely, there is something in a first introduction to a strange city which communicates a spirit of elation. The mere strangeness of what he sees, the novel aspect of things, the touch of the original and unexpected in the buildings, the conformation of the streets, the faces of the hurrying throngs—this new note of life, everywhere audible, is itself so surprising and absorbing that the mind is insensibly withdrawn from the contemplation of private griefs and memories. A more exact examination may reveal the depressing fact that a new world is new alone in name; that men carry their conventions with them wheresoever they travel, and may reproduce upon the loneliest rock of the Pacific or in the heart of the Sahara the complete social counterpart of those narrower forms of civilisation which they might be supposed to have renounced for ever. But even so, it still remains true that the thing which seems new is really new to us, for we live by our sensations as much as by our knowledge. He who cannot yield himself to this illusion of the senses will certainly deny himself the finer pleasures of existence; he will march across the world with the stiff air of the pedant, who sacrifices poetry to precision, declining more and more into a bloomless frugality of life, until at last not alone the outer world but the inner places of his own heart will become arid as a desert.

Arthur was much too young to reject the illusion of the senses, and too essentially a poet to desire to do so. He had his own private griefs, and they were by no means a negligible burden. In the noisy darkness of the long nights at sea, when the clanging of the piston kept him wakeful, he had again and again reviewed these griefs with a self-torturing persistence. Would he ever see his mother again?—and sometimes out of the heart of the black night a voice told him he would not. Would that exquisite but slender bond that held him to Elizabeth withstand the strain of a dateless separation? Would he find the things he sought, have strength to build the life he had had the vision to design, justify himself before the world? These and many cognate thoughts oppressed him; they wrote their abrupt interrogations on the curtain of the night, until he hid his face from them, and could have wept for weakness. But in spite of these oppressions, his spirit had gained both in hope and fortitude upon the voyage. He had begun to find himself blunderingly, as all men must at first, yet with some sincerity and real truth of vision. Two things he had discovered in himself which appeared to him a sufficient base for life, at once a programme and a creed—the one was the fixed determination to be content only with the best kind of life, the other was a faith in the Guiding Hand. From this creed he drew both his inspiration and his courage, and the more he dwelt upon it the more his heart leaped to meet the future, and the less did he regret the dissolution of the past.

And so that first vision of the New World thrilled him with a vague but joyous wonder. New York impressed him as the most superb of all examples of man's will to live. Here, upon a narrow strip of rock, the most ill-fitted spot in all the world for a city metropolitan, man had compelled nature to his purpose; he had disregarded her intention and had triumphed over it; he had bridged the very seas with ropes of steel, carried his means of locomotion into the upper air, and, unable wholly to escape the limitation of the jealous earth, had invaded the sky with his monstrous fortresses of steel and masonry. The very absence of grace, suavity, dignity in all he saw was itself impressive. Brutal as it was, yet was it not also the assertion of a strength which made for its object with a kind of elemental directness, not only scorning obstacles, but defying in its course the most august conventions of the centuries? The will to live—that was the legend flaunted by invisible banners on each sky-daring tower; the city hummed and sang with its crude music; it was written on every face he met in lines of grim endeavour. And it was a needed lesson for such as he. It struck him like a buffet from a strong hand, roused him like a challenge. To the perpetual oncoming hosts of invaders from an older world, New York spoke its iron gospel, "Man is unconquerable, if he have the will to conquer." And the oncoming host received that stern gospel with acclamation as indeed good news—not the highest gospel, nor the sweetest, but assuredly a needed gospel.

Certainly his situation called for both fortitude and hopefulness, for it was highly precarious. He had left London in such haste that he had had no time to make any plans for the future; he had simply acted on an imperative instinct of the soul to assert its rights, to seize upon immediate freedom. A voice within him had whispered, "Now or never," and in a sudden access of resolution he had broken his bonds. He did not regret its precipitation, but he had begun to perceive its consequences.

The only persons to whom he had confided his intention were Hilary Vickars and Mrs. Bundy. Immediately after the midnight interview with his mother he had gone to Vickars, who listened to his story in grave silence. How every detail of that hour passed with Hilary Vickars stood out in his memory! He could see the face of Vickars, pale and eager, as it bent toward him; he remembered how he noted that the lock of hair that fell across his forehead was newly streaked with gray, and how the veins in the long thin hands showed every intricate reticulation. He recollected how he watched a little patch of sunlight as it crept across the floor, saying to himself with a kind of childish irrelevance, "When it touches the wainscot, I must go." And what length of years or gulfs of immense vicissitude could obliterate the face of Elizabeth, as he saw it through that difficult hour—so pale, so sweet, so intense, her lips parted in surprise, her eyes signalling to him messages of faith and constancy?

"You are doing right," said Vickars, and he had laid the long, blue-veined hand upon his head in benediction; and then Elizabeth had taken Arthur's hand in hers, and kissed it softly, and held it for a moment to her bosom—and both acts had been done so solemnly that they seemed like sacred rites in a religious ceremony.

When he rose to go—it was in the exact moment when the patch of sunlight touched the wainscot—Vickars had offered him some practical advice.

"I wish I could help you," he said. "Let me see, it's New York you're going to, isn't it?"

"Yes—New York."

"Well, there's a man there I know slightly—I met him once over a negotiation for book rights in the States. He had an odd name—probably that's why I remember him—Wilbur Meredith Legion, and he seemed to be a decent fellow. It won't do you any harm to have an introduction to him."

From a pigeon-hole in his desk Vickars produced a card: "Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion, Vermont Building, Broadway, New York. Literary and Press Agent."

"You'll find him interesting, at all events," said Vickars, "and he may be able to put you in the way of using your pen."

From Lonsdale Road Arthur had gone to Mrs. Bundy's. That redoubtable woman at once rose to the occasion, and indulged herself in a flight of prophecy which would have done credit to the wildest programmes of Mr. Bundy.

"You'll make your fortune before you're thirty," she exclaimed. "Think of Carnegie."

And thereupon she poured forth a stream of exhilarating and incorrect information, which sounded strangely like excerpts from Bundy's prospectuses, so that it seemed as though a conjurer flung a dozen golden balls of sudden wealth into the air, and kept them flashing and gyrating for some seconds with amazing ingenuity.

"Stop!—stop!" said Arthur, laughing.

"Not a bit of it," she replied. "I only wish you could meet Bundy. He'd be the man to help you."

"Where is Mr. Bundy just now?"

"The last I heard he was in Texas. He was negotiating the purchase of forty thousand acres of land which he says is the finest in the world. Let me see—why, to be sure, he said he'd be in New York before Christmas. He always stops at the Astor House. No doubt you'll find him there."

"I will certainly look for him," said Arthur.

"Do. If there's any man can make your fortune, it's Bundy." And then, with unremarked inconsistency, she added, "I wish I could give you something, my dear, but it's low water with us just now. Stop, though; here's something that may be useful." After rummaging in a cupboard she produced a small flat bottle, which contained something which bore a strong resemblance to furniture polish. "It's rum and butter, my dear, and let me tell you it's a splendid remedy for sore throat. Those ships are cold, draughty places, and maybe you'll be glad of it. Bundy always takes it with him on a journey. Well, my dear, let an old woman kiss you, and wish you well," whereupon the motherly creature flung her arms round his neck and kissed him heartily. The two Bundy boys, coming in at that moment from the back garden, where they had spent an exhilarating hour in lassoing a collie dog, stared round-eyed at this proceeding, the younger of the two remarking with an air of solemn impudence, "I'll tell father"—whereupon Mrs. Bundy had chased them out of the kitchen with many threats, and it was thus, in a gust of laughter, he had taken leave of his old friend. She had stood at her door till the last moment when he disappeared down the road, waving her hand energetically, and in spite of all that was ridiculous in the scene, Arthur felt a real and deep sadness when she faded from his view.

An introduction to a dubious person called Legion, the frail possibility of a rendezvous with Bundy, and a few pounds in his pocket—it must be admitted this was not an exorbitant equipment for the conquest of a new world; but to this exiguous capital there must be added something not readily assessed—the high and hopeful spirit of liberated youth. He had escaped the strangling grip of circumstance; he was free, and the blood moved in his veins with a novel speed and nimbleness; he was at last upon the world's open road.

His first act was to secure a room at the old Astor House, and make inquiries for Mr. Bundy. He addressed these inquiries to a clerk who was so busily absorbed in the task of picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick that he appeared to resent interruption. When Arthur had twice repeated his question, this youth answered curtly that he didn't know, and turned his back upon him.

"Pardon me, but I have a particular reason for asking. If you are too busy to examine the register, please let me."

The clerk pushed a formidable volume toward him, and went on picking his teeth. There was no Bundy in the long list of recent entries, but there was a wonderful array of places, with strange, exotic names, such as Saratoga, Macon, Fond du Lac, Pueblo, and a hundred others that were musical with old-world memories. Upon that sordid page they shone like gems; they exhaled a perfume of secular romance; Memphis and Carthagena, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rome, Valparaiso and Paris, jostled each other in the wildest incongruity, as if each bore witness to some ancient mode of life which had helped to form the strange amalgam which called itself American. He was so delighted with this glittering tournament of words that at length the clerk, remarking his interest, condescended to inquire, "Found it?"

"Mr. Bundy? No; he doesn't appear to be here."

"What like was he?"

"An Englishman. A small man, very quick and active; interested in mines, I think."

"Well, why didn't you say he was interested in mines, any way? Then I should have known. He was here six months ago, stayed a week, private lunch every day in Parlour A, floating a syndicate for Texas land. I know him. Wanted me to take shares. Said he'd be back in a month. Hasn't come. Guess he's bust."

"He's expected at Christmas, isn't he?"

"Can't say. If you make out to know Mr. Bundy, like you say, you'd know that it's his pecooliarity not to answer to anybody's expectations. He's a live man, is Bundy. Yes, sir, for a Britisher he's the liveliest man I know."

With this unsolicited testimonial to the liveliness of Mr. Bundy he had to be content.

"I'll let you know when he comes," said the clerk more graciously. "I'll see you don't miss him."

"You don't know his address, do you?"

"Why, let me see. Yes, he left an address. Here it is—Bundy, Curtis House, Oklahoma City; but, you know, he won't be there. You can write and try; the Oklahoma people will trace him for you."

"Thank you, I will do so," said Arthur, and withdrew to his bedroom, where he spent an interested half-hour in studying the uses of a large coil of rope which was conspicuously displayed near the window, together with minute directions as to what to do in case of fire. He fell asleep that night with the directions in case of fire, and the exotic names he had read, and the remembered rhythm of the steamer piston all singing together in his mind, in an infinite succession of strophes, at the end of which clashed like a cymbal the words Bundy and Oklahoma.

The next morning he sought the office of Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion. He was whirled rapidly in an elevator to the eleventh floor of a populous and narrow building. When, after some explanations made to an indifferent office-boy, whose jaws appeared to be afflicted with a curious rotary motion, due, as he afterwards discovered, to the mastication of chewing-gum, he was ushered into the presence of the agent. Mr. Legion proved to be a stout, elderly man, clean-shaved, with a high, benevolent forehead, and a most remarkable squint. He had quite a patriarchal air, a manner that might be termed diaconal, and a suave and insinuating voice.

"Ah! you come from my friend, my dear friend, Vickars. A most remarkable man!" But when Arthur mentioned Vickars' latest book, he observed that Mr. Wilbur Legion did not appear to have heard of it.

"We handle such an immense quantity of stuff," he said apologetically. "The world's greatest authors come to us. They are beginning to find out what we can do for them commercially. Have you ever heard of Sampson E. Dodge?"

Arthur confessed his ignorance.

"One of our brightest young men, sir. A man destined to take rank with our greatest writers. You must have seen his story, The Perambulator with a Thousand Wheels. It has sold a hundred thousand. Two years ago he was a clerk in a dry goods store, and to-day he is among the most popular of our American authors. You've not heard of him? Well, you are to be excused, sir. We have not yet operated in Great Britain. Great Britain appears to have a prejudice against our great writers. Wilbur M. Legion means to wake Great Britain up, sir. This state of wilful ignorance cannot exist much longer. Great Britain cannot afford, I say, to be ignorant of the work of Mr. Sampson E. Dodge."

"I see that I, as well as Great Britain, have a good deal to learn," said Arthur, with quiet irony.

"You have, indeed. Not to know Mr. Sampson E. Dodge is to argue yourself unknown, as some one on your side of the water once said—Browning, wasn't it?"

"Not Browning, I think."

"Well, it's true just the same. I suppose you don't know our new poets either, do you? Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum, for example. I am happy to say that I operate all her poetry for her. She writes a poem a day, sometimes three or four, and I place them for her in the magazines and journals of the country. Her Ode to Washington has been generally admired. Her little talks with women on the management of the home and the baby are even more popular than her poems. When I first knew her, she was earning nothing, sir; it is a proud reflection that to-day, through my efforts, her income is at least ten thousand dollars a year."

Mr. Legion was evidently prepared to indulge himself at length in personal reminiscences. In the course of ten minutes he had given sufficient biographies of his leading patrons, including not only the details of their earnings, but many particulars of their private lives—such as the fact that Mr. Sampson E. Dodge was not always strictly sober, and Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum had been twice divorced. And with that amiable American frankness which stands in such marked contrast to the reticence of the British man of business, Mr. Legion proceeded to declare the amount of his own earnings, the number of his children, his fatherly hopes for Ulysses E. Legion, "a smart boy, sir," who was doing well at the high school, together with some account of how he first met Mrs. Legion, and his intentions to take his entire family to Europe, at an early date. He concluded by asking Arthur to lunch with him, and pressed on his notice a box of cigars (the cost of which he named), and a thick handbook, adorned with many portraits, which explained and justified the world-wide operations of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion.

Mr. Legion took him to a kind of club which had its quarters in the top storey of a lofty building, from which a marvellous view of New York was obtained. During the process of lunch, which was excellent, Mr. Legion drew Arthur's attention to a large number of persons, all of whom were described as among the "smartest" men in New York. Mr. Legion appeared to know all about them, and Arthur found himself listening to a vast amount of recondite information concerning their upbringing, their early struggles, their matrimonial adventures or misadventures, and above all, the amount of dollars which each was supposed to possess.

"That is the celebrated Stamford Parker, sir,"—indicating a spare, clean-shaved man. "Sure now, you must have heard of him? What? Not heard of him? The greatest magazine proprietor in America, sir. Raised in Vermont, worked on a farm, telegraph operator at Bangor, Maine, bust twice, made good at last, income half a million, his wife a lovely woman. Ah! he sees me; I think he is coming over to speak to me."

The great man strolled across the room, smoking his cigar, and Arthur was effusively introduced to him as a bright young Englishman, fresh from Oxford, and acquainted with all the leading English authors of the day.

"Well, not quite all," said Arthur, with a smile.

The great man received his demur without surprise. When he had returned to his table, Legion said, with a shake of his patriarchal head, "Now, you shouldn't have said that, you know."

"Said what?"

"That you didn't know all your leading authors."

"But I don't know them."

"Well, you needn't have said so. Didn't you see how Parker froze at once? But you don't understand our American way, so you must be excused."

"And what is the American way?"

"Always go a little beyond the truth, but on no account below it—people expect it of you. Leave them to make their discount."

This principle, so unblushingly announced, served Mr. Legion for a text, on which he discanted for some minutes, at the end of which discourse Arthur began to acquire some insight into the meaning of the word "bunkum," and was in a position to apply the method of discount to Mr. Legion's own artless superlatives concerning his business methods and success in life.

Mr. Legion was genial, affable, cordial, in a way which no Englishman could have attained toward an entire stranger, and Arthur was disposed to set a high value on these qualities. Nevertheless, he could not but remark that the agent appeared anxious to evade any practical obligations imposed on him by Vickars's letter of introduction. He drew a picture, almost comic in its gross inaccuracy, as Arthur afterwards discovered, of the extreme ease with which fortunes were made in America, and especially by the pen. Magazine writers lived in sumptuous hotels, and successful novelists built for themselves elaborate palaces. It was the age of young men. A man who had not made a reputation at thirty was a "Has-been." The old method of slowly acquired and slowly widening reputation was obsolete. This was the day of literary booms.

"And after the boom the boomerang!" interjected Arthur.

"Very good—very good indeed. I always thought you Britishers had no sense of humour. It's a general belief in the States. But that's quite a smart saying. Sampson E. Dodge might have said it."

Arthur ought to have blushed at this high praise, but instead, he stolidly explained his epigram, and observed further that no literary man who respected himself would connive in a boom. "Hilary Vickars, for example."

"And that's just where Vickars makes his mistake," said Legion. "And what's the result? He isn't known."

"But he has done excellent work."

"You make me tired," answered Legion. "What's the good of doing excellent work if no one reads it? The public doesn't know good work from bad. Some one's got to tell them. An author must be written up. And let me tell you another thing—the best writing in the world won't attract so much attention as half a dozen spicy paragraphs about the writer. Do you know how The Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels became so popular?"

"Not having seen the book, it can't be supposed I do."

"Well, I'll tell you. I killed the author three times before his book came out."

"You did what?" asked Arthur, with a shout of laughter.

"Killed him, sir. Once he perished on the Matterhorn in a snow-storm. The next time he was killed in a railway accident in Canada. The last time he was lost in a wreck in the South Sea Islands. By this time every one was talking of him. I received no fewer than four hundred press cuttings the last time headed, 'A Famous Author Lost at Sea.' The name of Sampson E. Dodge became as famous as the President's. Of course, when his book came out every one rushed for it."

"And was he really in Switzerland, Canada, or the South Seas?"

"Certainly not. As safe as you are. Writing his book at a farmhouse in Vermont."

"Do you often practise this method, Mr. Legion?"

"Well, it must be applied judiciously, of course. Dodge writes adventure novels, so I give him adventures. But for quieter authors, you must invent something else. It used to be appendicitis, but that's nearly played out. Total loss of memory through overwork used to take, but I found that the authors objected to it. Double pneumonia in a lonely shack among the mountains, where he had gone to obtain local colour for his new novel, answers as well as anything else. And that reminds me—didn't you say Vickars had been ill?"

"Yes, he nearly died. Typhoid fever from bad drains."

"And didn't anybody write it up?"

"Not that I ever heard of."

"My! what a blunder! And with a new book coming out, too. I wish I could have had the handling of that 'story.'"

"I don't think Vickars would have liked that."

"No, I suppose not. You Britishers seem to be afraid of publicity. It almost amounts to a disease."

"We are getting over it by degrees. I assure you there are British authors who are quite reconciled to the immodesty of newspaper puffs. But not men like Vickars. He is one of those who stand in proud silence, and is content to wait for his recognition."

"Well, I guess he'll have to wait till there's skating in Hades. The standing apart business is all very well if you've got the dollars and don't care; but if you haven't, it means starvation." He rose from the table, and said, "Shall we go?"

"Well, there's one thing I want to ask you first," said Arthur, "and as you haven't mentioned it, it seems I must. I want to know if you can put me in the way of earning my living in New York?"

"But, my dear sir, I thought you were just travelling through for pleasure."

"I was afraid that you were under that misconception, and I apologise for not undeceiving you sooner. The plain truth is, I have a very little money in my pocket, no particular experience of life, and my bread to earn."

"Dear me!—dear me! That sounds serious."

"It may easily become so."

The older man looked gravely sympathetic. Suddenly, however, he brightened up, as though he had discovered the solution of the whole problem.

"Well, young man, don't be alarmed," he cried. "Remember that you've come to the land of the free and the home of the brave. There are no feudal distinctions to keep you down here, as in your own unhappy country. This great and glorious Republic allows free play to individual exertions. Sir, America bids you rise, and all you have to do is to go out—and Rise!"

"It would be a good deal more to the purpose if you could tell me how and in what way to begin this process of rising."

"Ah! that's another matter. I must think that over. Come to me again in a day or two. And remember my advice to you is, Go out and Rise!"

He went out, too much amused with Legion's valediction to criticise the man very strictly. It was not until he lay a-bed that night, thinking over the curious adventures of the day, that a strong conviction seized him that Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion was a windbag.

XIII

ADVENTURES OF AN INCOMPETENT

When a youth is thoroughly adrift in a strange city, with no better equipment than a large stock of unapplied aptitudes, he is likely to make many interesting discoveries concerning the real nature of life, the chief of which is that there is no way of living that has not a good deal more in it than meets the eye. By what adroit use of opportunity is the least foothold secured in this crowded world, by what intrigues and stratagems, comparable only with the art which governs battlefields, and less than that art only in the range of its effects! By what quickness of resource, adaptability to circumstance, infinite, weariless plotting and manoeuvering, were only so small a thing achieved as to sell a card of buttons with success! Around this exiled youth jostled the rude, vigorous world of New York, a multitude of men and women each battling toward a certain goal, and not one of whom was not better equipped to win the race than himself. Certain phrases used by this jostling crowd struck upon his ear continuously, such as "to make good," "to deliver the goods." They implied that nothing was valued in New York save the sort of brute force that trampled its way into attention.

"He has made good, sir," was Legion's verdict on that eminent writer, Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, and the phrase was uttered with an accent of reverence which was undoubtedly sincere.

With Legion ideals and intentions counted for nothing; culture and scholarship were worthless commodities; the one thing he could appreciate was concrete success—"to make good."

The same spirit met Arthur everywhere. He found the newspapers pouring adulation at the feet of men against whom every kind of crime might be alleged; but they had "made good," and therefore were unassailable. He remarked a cheerful disregard of morals, which was less disrespect than light-hearted ignorance; and the most curious thing of all was that the very men who talked as though honesty, faith, and trust did not exist were themselves men of amiable virtues. He found himself quickly and quietly appraised; a keen eye ran over him, reading his deficiencies, and his doom was pronounced with a smile. An insulting word would have been less difficult to bear than that disconcerting smile; but these arbiters of his destiny never failed in courtesy, nor in the sort of kindness which finds its outlet in easy generosity. They would invite him to lunch, introduce him to clubs, allow him to believe that he had made real progress in their friendship and esteem; but when it came to the enunciation of some plan by which he might earn his bread, they became strangely silent. They "gave him a good time," to use another cheerful American phrase—to do so appeared to be part of a definite system of international courtesy; but they were at no pains to conceal their sense that he was a virtual incompetent.

Again and again, in the still hours of the morning, he recounted the rebuffs and misadventures of the previous day with wonder and misgiving. The irony of his position was laughable, if it had not been so serious. He had been told by the eloquent Legion to go out and rise; and certainly it appeared, by the light of conspicuous examples, that he was in a land where multitudes of men had risen from the lowliest to the loftiest positions with a singular celerity. Yet no one believed him capable of rising, nor indeed did he himself venture to assert it with any vigour of conviction. And in such moments there came to him the recollection of his father. For the first time he realised with some approach to adequacy the vital elements in his father's character. He told himself that had his father been flung suddenly into the streaming tides of New York, he would not have lived through twenty-four hours without getting his feet securely planted on the rung of some ladder that led to eminence. And then, with a sudden heat of resolution, he would tell himself that he was his father's son, and he would rise and go forth once more to hammer on the barred gates of chance.

"To-day I will not fail," he would cry.

And when the day closed, recording nothing but defeat, he would still cry, "To-morrow I must succeed," and endeavour to believe it.

The real trouble was that he was assaulting the stern citadel of life with weapons not only imperfect, but nearly useless. He had been taught many things, but not the one thing needful; and he now perceived with humiliation that the humblest human creature who could work a typewriter, keep accounts, hew a stone, or shape a beam, was more efficient than he to wrest a living from the world. This discovery was the first real lesson he had ever learned from life. And it said much for his character, that he accepted it without resentment, without the bitterness and sulkiness of injured pride.

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 assortment of unmarketable knowledge. I believe that exhausts the statement of my assets, 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 unblushing precision toward the special tit-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 manuscript, 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 ingratitude 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.

"That's what we want," he cried joyously. "I always said you could write, but I really didn't think you'd get hold of the American method so soon."

"But it's pure nonsense—in fact, a burlesque," said Arthur.

"A what?"

"A burlesque, a skit, a satire, if you will."

"You may call it what you like, but it's what I want, and what the public wants, and I'm going to print it."

"I hope you'll do nothing of the kind. You must see it is nonsense, and no one will believe it."

"The American public will believe anything," Legion retorted with grave conviction. "They like being fooled. It is what the papers exist for. And there's no sort of fooling pleases them so much as patriotic fooling. That reference of yours now to America being remembered as the birthplace of Dodge—why, it's a stroke of genius, sir. It may not be strictly true, of course; but it is impressive, and it makes folk feel proud of their native authors, and it sells the books, and that's what we want, isn't it?"

Remonstrance was so clearly useless that Arthur said no more, and in due time read with blushes his unlucky paragraph in the advertising columns of a New York paper, and found that it had been disseminated by the hand of Legion through a hundred inferior papers, where it was duly quoted as the valuable opinion of a celebrated English critic.

This was but one instance among many of the remarkable methods of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion. He pursued mendacity with an ardour which few persons have manifested in the quest of truth. He dwelt in an atmosphere of exaggeration so dense that the real values of things were totally obscured. Words were to him the golden balls of a juggler; he tossed them hither and thither with a sole eye to rapid effect and novel combination. Upon the question of Dodge he was fantastically sincere; he was really in love with the man and his writings; but the language which he used of Dodge was substantially the same language with which he decorated all his authors. It was his boast that he would make the worst book sell by daring methods of advertisement. He once expressed to Arthur with entire gravity the opinion that the true cause for the decay of religion was that the Bible had not been sufficiently advertised; it has been left to preachers instead of being handed over to the press agents. Let him have the handling of it for a month, and he would show them! For it must be noted that Mr. Legion was in his way a respecter of religion, a zealous opponent of heterodoxies, a man of excellent Sunday proprieties, who had won the gratitude of the sect to which he belonged by presenting an organ to his church. If he had been told that his chief achievement in life was to debase the literary currency, he would have been genuinely astonished, for so singular a thing is the mind of man that he actually believed that he had advanced its interests.

Things came to a crisis at last, and, as it happened, over the very article which Arthur had written on Vickars. This article had remained in Legion's hands, and what was Arthur's astonishment when he found it duly head-lined in a sensational journal, and accompanied by a portrait which was certainly not that of Vickars. Here and there he could distinguish some remnants of his own handiwork, but the whole was overlaid by the most extraordinary flamboyant ornament, and abounded in passages which he recognised as pure Legionese. The things which he had said about Vickars in unsuspicious confidence were all remembered, but were twisted with such amazing ingenuity into novel forms that he blushed to recognise them. Vickars was described as living in a garret, existing upon the most exiguous of earnings, finding his comrades among all kinds of social outcasts, a hero, a saint, and a socialist, assisted in his sacrifice by a lovely daughter, whose personal charms were touched in with the bold hand of a police-court journalist. Arthur's heart flamed as he read the article. He could imagine what Vickars would think of it; what he would think of the pathetic fiction that he had nearly died of a fever caught in nursing a diseased outcast (this was the Legionese improvement on the drain-story), and with what feelings he would regard the exploitation of Elizabeth. It seemed to him that the world must ring with the infamous business; that Vickars would become the laughing-stock of London; and that since the article could be attributed to no one but himself, he would henceforth stand pilloried as a false friend, a liar, and a fool.

The moment Legion appeared in the office, he flung the article upon his desk, and cried in a voice shaken with anger, "Did you write that?"

"Why, what's the matter?" he replied, slowly adjusting his spectacles. "Oh! I see—the Vickars article. I meant to tell you about that. What you wrote was too good to waste, so I worked over it a bit, and I've got quite a satisfactory price for it. I wouldn't wonder if it created quite a demand for Vickars' books, and we ought to communicate with him at once about his new book."

He was going on, in the innocence of his heart, to explain how a Vickars boom might be worked, when Arthur interrupted him with a furious gesture.

"What I wrote was truth, and what you have written is lies. Why, even the portrait you have used isn't Vickars!"

"And who cares about that? No one knows any better. It's a good enough portrait, any way."

"I can't argue about it, Mr. Legion. You have done me incalculable harm. You have ruined me with Vickars. As for his ever allowing you to handle his books, let me tell you he wouldn't touch a dirty dog like you with a ten-foot pole."

"What's that?" cried Legion, his face pale with astonishment and indignation. "What was that you said?"

"I say you are a scoundrel, Mr. Legion—a mercenary, lying scoundrel!"

"Oh! come now, you're excited. I can make allowances—you don't know what you're saying."

"I know quite well what I'm saying, and I will repeat it, if you like: you're a scoundrel!"

Even Legion's good temper was not proof against this violence.

"Very good," he said. "I won't tell you what you are. But I'll tell you what's going to happen to you. You are going to starve in the streets of New York, my young friend. You're too darned superior for this country of commonsense business methods. You're the sort that comes to sleeping on the benches in Union Square, and fighting for a place in the bread-line."

"Very possibly," said Arthur. "I'm sure I don't know what sort I am, but I am sure of this, that I am not the sort you want in this office, and I beg to say good-morning."

He put on his hat and coat, and rushed for the door. Perhaps it was because Legion saw how white and drawn his face was, and how wild his eyes, that his heart relented towards him.

"Look here," he said, "hadn't you better think it over? I didn't mean what I said about starving in the streets. I hadn't ought to have said that. Besides, you know, there's some money owing to you. Don't go without that."

But the mention of money, instead of staying his flight, lent it new impulse. He was besmirched enough already without taking the wages of his defilement. He rushed out of the room, and the banging door cut short Mr. Legion's eirenicon.

XIV

HE FINDS A FRIEND

Arthur's first act on regaining his hotel was to terminate his residence therein. He ought to have done this long ago, for these thronged corridors, resounding night and day with the chink of innumerable dollars, was no place for one so poor as he. He had stayed there rather from natural heedlessness and inexperience than from choice; partly also in the hope that the invaluable Bundy would arrive; but now his fears were thoroughly aroused. Legion's phrase about the benches in Union Park and the breadline stuck in his mind. He had heard of such tragedies; he remembered a story which Vickars had told him of one of the most brilliant poets of the day who, in the course of his early struggles, had been reduced to holding horses at public-house doors for ha'pence in the Strand. It had also been the habit of his father, when he wished to inculcate habits of economy and perseverance on his childish mind, to do so by various realistic versions of the prodigal son, illustrated from the histories of certain men he had known who had not possessed the sense "to know which side their bread was buttered." It seemed that he was well upon the way to become such a prodigal. He was bound for the bread-line. Well, if this were the appointed night when he was to take farewell of respectability, the obsequies should be fitly celebrated. If to-morrow he must starve, to-night, at least, he would eat; he had lost so much that no further loss could make him poor; and from the extreme of fear his mind ran to the extreme of recklessness. From the clerk with the tooth-pick he learned the address of a small hotel near the docks, to which he ordered his trunks to be forwarded; having done which, and distributed various tips with a gentlemanly profusion, he stepped out into the gathering night of New York.

The city hummed and sang like some monstrous wheel, driven by an unseen dynamo. It presented to the eye a riot of life and light; its lofty buildings flared like torches, its shops glowed like jewels, its streets were lanes of fire; and into the upper air, still coloured with the hues of sunset, there rose an immense reverberation, composed of human cries and shouts, wheels pounding on granite roads, wheels groaning on roads of steel, all resolved into a thunderous bass note, the raucous music of the human multitude. There are moods in which such a spectacle is exhilarating, moods in which it is dreadful; but there is another and a rarer mood, when it appears majestic. As Arthur surveyed the scene, it was this aspect of majesty that appealed to him. It overwhelmed his mind with an impression more commonly attributed to astronomy—viz., the entire insignificance of the individual in relation to physical magnitudes. His own particular troubles suddenly assumed dwarfed proportions; his little life appeared a mere bubble floating for an instant on the crest of disappearing waves; the city itself a streaming star-river, flowing out of dark eternities, peopled for an instant by a tribe of eager ants. To what avail the strife, the passion, the disorder of these tiny lives? Yet a little while, a few days it might be, a few years at most, and he would be lost to sight as though he had never been. But the wheel would spin on, with a million new Ixions bound upon its flaming spokes; the magnificent and monstrous city would go on, piling pyramid on pyramid above the bones of its exhausted slaves, and with not one light the less because he did not see it, not one softened moment in its raucous song because his ear was filled with the clods of the valley.

In that moment he understood why men commit suicide, why it may appear the soberest act of reason and of justice to fling away a life which has lost its value in losing its egoism. But over that abyss his thought hovered but an instant, and the horror of that instant produced a swift reaction. The dangerous moment passed, and left him with a new appetite for life. He felt the swift uprisal of faculties of enjoyment in himself such as the convalescent feels when the blood flows nimbly after sickness; and on a sudden he found himself convulsed with laughter. The absurdity of his position moved him like a caricature. He had blundered badly, but of what consequence was it in the vast sum of things? All things continued as they were, the stars still were steadfast in their courses, and from that upper silence fell a voice that made him, and all human perturbations, a vain thing that endured but for a moment. The spirit of derision was upon him, and, still laughing, he plunged into the moving crowd.

Presently he found himself in Sixth Avenue, and his eye recognised the sign of a small Italian restaurant of which he had heard an excellent report. The front of the house was mean and narrow; the door opened on a sanded vestibule, which, in turn, led to a long and crowded room. At its upper end was a daïs, on which an excellent orchestra was seated. As he entered the room, a man with a sweet and powerful tenor voice sang an Italian comic song, the chorus of which was taken up by the diners, who beat time with glasses and knives upon the tables. An extraordinary vivacity characterised this curiously mixed assembly; they appeared to have no cares in life, or, if they had, they were intent upon forgetting them. All types were present, from the city clergyman a little ill at ease in his environment to women of exotic beauty, whose sidelong glances left little doubt of their profession. Yet there was no element of disorder, no impression of vulgarity; there was freedom but no licence, the mingling of human creatures in a catholic amity; each content for the time to forget distinctions that elsewhere might be deemed important, each happy in a transient release from the servitudes of the long day, and perhaps from the memories of misfortune.

Arthur was fortunate in finding a single seat vacant at a narrow table next the wall. Here he took his place, and had already proceeded halfway with his meal before he noticed a man who sat on the other side of the table. He was a cheerful little fellow, with a good face, humorous eyes, and mobile mouth, who was evidently itching for conversation. Some trifling courtesy of the table brought them acquainted, and in a few moments they were deep in talk. It seemed that he was an Englishman, a wandering artist, a man with a wide and cheerful acquaintance with vicissitude, who gave his name as Horner. He had been born and bred in London, in an atmosphere of lower middle-class insularity and ignorance, from which he had escaped into a wider world by the means of art-classes and night-schools. He had thus reached the lower slopes of Parnassus, only to discover that there his progress ended; he had neither the education nor the means to carry him farther; and so he had slowly declined from the production of original work into a kind of Ishmael hanging on the borders of the art-world, an expert restorer of old paintings, and at times an amateur dealer. It is a curious fact that the Englishman, who at home is the most reticent of all human animals, often becomes the most communicative when he meets men of his own nation abroad. There the freemasonry of race tells, loneliness acts as a solvent of reserve, and the possession of common memories invites immediate intimacy. To hear the familiar Cockney dialect again, with its clipped vowels and reckless distribution of the aspirate, to remark phrases heard nowhere save upon the London streets, is to be transported instantly, as on a magic carpet, to the atmosphere of home, to see again the glitter of the Strand, the midnight throngs in Piccadilly Circus, the dear and dingy purlieus of Soho. The very words have an esoteric significance; they cannot be heard or uttered save with a thrilling heart; and among banished Englishmen they are the symbols of an irrecoverable joy, and constitute an instant bond of brotherhood.

Arthur listened with delight to Horner's narrative of his adventures. It appeared that he knew most of the millionaires who collected pictures, and nearly all the dealers from whom they bought them. In describing these people he had the rare art of the vitalising touch. The millionaires moved before the eye in all their eager ignorance, the dealers in all their duplicity and craft. Manufactories of old masters existed for the sole purpose of meeting the demand of American millionaires. It was a known fact that sixteen thousand Corots had passed the New York Customs House in the last few years, whereas every one knew that Corot could not have painted more than two thousand pictures in a long life of the most unremitting toil.

"Why, I could paint better Corots myself than most of those that hang in American galleries," he remarked.

"Perhaps you've done so," laughed Arthur.

"I won't say I hav'n't," he replied with cheerful impudence. "But I've done with that sort of thing now. And I'll say one thing for myself, I never yet sold a picture that I knew was a fake. But, O Lor', these people are such children! They think they know everything, and on art they are as ignorant as dirt. They carry round little books of nothingness by Professor This and Professor That, and go into raptures over all sorts of rubbish because they're told to. And they won't be told better, that's the trouble. But I mean to tell them some day. Only, you see, I can't write the way it ought to be written. I suppose, now, you're not by any chance a writer, are you?"

"I suppose I'm a sort of writer. At all events, the last thing I did was to write something of which I am heartily ashamed."

"And did they sack you?"

"They did. Or, to be more precise, I sacked myself."

"Well, why shouldn't you and I join forces? Of course I wouldn't think of saying this to any one but an Englishman. I can give you lots of stuff, and you can write it up, you know. We might make a book, don't you think?"

"But I know nothing about art except in an amateur way."

"And what's that matter, I'd like to know? I'll be bound you know lots more than the folk that do the writing here. And as for the collections—oh my, you should see them! Constables done in Soho, and Raphaels painted in Paris; curtains hung over them, if you please, as if they were too precious to see the light; and when you mildly remark, 'But that picture's in Munich or Dresden or Buckingham Palace,' they reply indignantly, 'Oh no! that's the copy—this the original. I have a certificate of genuineness.' And then they produce a written pedigree, with the names of Prince This or Prince That, through whose hands their precious canvas has passed, when any one with half an eye can see that the paint is 'ardly dry upon it."

"Is it as bad as that?"

"Much worse, if I told you all."

And thereupon followed story after story, full of rapid etchings of the dupes and the dealers; with amazing biographies of adroit Jews born in garrets who now owned palaces and sported titles; and strange old men in London who hid behind shuttered windows genuine and priceless pictures, and credulous millionaires in New York, who bought what might by courtesy be called pictures by the yard, labelling them with august names, and taking care that the papers duly reported the immense sums they paid for them. It was all highly amusing, a backstairs view of life, so to speak, which somehow bore the stamp of the authentic. The time sped; the music and the company had become less restrained; and the hovering waiter reminded them by his black looks that they had sat too long.

"Where are you staying?" said Homer, as they rose to go.

Arthur mentioned the hotel to which he had sent his trunks.

"Oh my!" said Horner, "but, you know, that won't do. It isn't a safe district, that. What took you there?"

"Poverty, to be frank," said Arthur. "I find it necessary to choose the cheapest lodging I can find."

"But it won't do," said the little man gravely. He meditated for a moment, as if not quite sure of how to express what he wished to say. "Englishmen should stand together, shouldn't they?" he remarked at last. "Now look here, suppose you come to my rooms. You'll be very welcome. I can give you a shake-down of some sort, and to-morrow we'll talk over that book. I really shall be very much gratified if you'll come."

The offer was made with such unaffected kindness that Arthur's heart warmed toward the little man. He had already received a hard lesson in life that day, and it had left his heart sore and bitter. Here was another kind of lesson. A man whom the world had not used generously or perhaps justly, a total stranger, who had seen enough of the seamy side of life to make him reasonably suspicious or even cynical, was ready to share what he had with him on the mere ground of common nationality. "Englishmen should stand together," he had said, and was instantly prepared to act upon that simple ethic, although for all he knew the man to whom he offered hospitality might be a rascal or a thief. Such a lesson at such a moment was calculated to restore faith in human nature, faith in that radical goodness of the human heart which is the base of all decent living.

"Mr. Horner," he said, "I accept your offer thankfully. You don't know how much you've done for me by making it. I shall never forget it."

"Oh! that's all right," said the little man, with a deprecating gesture. "I've only done what I'd like some one to do for me." And he did not seem to be aware that the words uttered so carelessly, as if they expressed nothing more than the most ordinary commonplace, really contained the sum of all religion.

Arthur went home with his new friend, and found that his rooms consisted of a littered studio in one of the older houses of New York.

"When I'm doing pretty well, I always stay in a hotel," said Horner, "but at a pinch one can sleep here."

"Why apologise?" said Arthur. "Why, man, you have something here that the best hotel in New York can't give you. You've an open fireplace. It's like coming home again to see that."

"Yes," said Horner, with a whimsical air of wisdom, "the decay of marriage and the family in America dates from the hot-air register and the steam-heating business. People who never sit round an open fire never get a chance of knowing one another. I never had much of a home myself. I had to start out working pretty early; but there's one thing I never forget, and that's the open fire round which we kids sat on winter nights while mother told us stories. I used to see things in that fire—castles, and sunsets, and burning ships, like most kids do. But I wanted to paint 'em, and if it hadn't been for those times in the firelight I'd never have been an artist. But O Lor', look at these Americans!—the women standing over hot-air registers with their clothes blown out like balloons when they want to get warm, and the men getting as close as they can to a fizzling coil of steam-pipes. I don't call that being civilised, do you? It's a beastly way of living, I call it."

While he was thus delivering his views on the iniquity of steam heating, the little man had lit a fire of wood, which instantly blazed up, and filled the room with ruddy light. Having done this, he attacked with great vigour what appeared to be a wardrobe, tugging at it with might and main, until the whole front suddenly collapsed, revealing a concealed bed. From behind a curtain in a corner of the room he wheeled a small chair-bedstead, and at the same time produced a plate of fruit and a tin of tobacco.

"Now we can be comfortable," he remarked. "It's not exactly in the Waldorf Astoria style, but I guess it'll do. And now let us talk."

If Horner had talked well over dinner in the restaurant, he talked super-excellently well now in this friendly firelight. Arthur had little to do but listen, which he did for the most part with rising admiration. He remarked an unaffected innocence of spirit in the man which was entirely unsubdued by his hard experience of life; he talked like a good-natured, enthusiastic boy who had by some occult means possessed himself of the experience of a world-worn man; he entertained ideals of an almost pathetic impractibility; he had even written poetry, and at that moment, it appeared, designed a prose work on art which should be a magnificent compendium of the wisdom of the ages. Of these great designs he spoke at one moment with the ardent vanity of the amateur; the next, the man of the world popped up, to pour upon them humorous depreciation. The same spirit of contradiction coloured all his judgments. England he should have detested, for it had cast him out; but let a word of justest criticism be uttered of its customs or its manners, and he was in arms at once. America had befriended him, and yet he was more than candid in his apprehension of her faults, and had no word of praise for her institutions. In his judgments of men it was the same. He had seen enough of the baser side of life to fill him with the venom of Diogenes, and yet he spoke with kindliness even of those who had defrauded him. His mind moved in giddy flight among these crags of contradiction; he did not aim at consistency, nor did he value it; yet out of the turmoil of his thoughts there shone unmistakably a generous nature, a kindly disposition, a temperament of light-hearted courage, which made a jest of disadvantage and calamity. Courage was perhaps his most essential quality, and particularly that rare courage which is not depressed by past error; so that listening to him, Arthur thought that many a preacher he had heard had a much less vital message to declare than this irresponsible but philosophic Bohemian.