The World Of Chance. William Dean Howells
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with the self-scorn which Mr. Kane's attitude enabled him to show. " I was so low-spirited that I couldn't rise to the hands that offered to pull me out of my Slough of Despond. I felt that the slightest exertion would sink me over head and ears. I had better stay as I was."
" I understand," said Mr. Kane. " But why should a man of your age be in low spirits? "
" Why? Nobody can tell why he's in low spirits exactly. I suppose I got to thinking the prospect for my book wasn't very gay. It's hard to wait."
" Was that all? "
" I was a little homesick, too. But wasn't the other enough? "
"I can't say. It's a long time since I was your age. But shall I tell you what I first thought your unhappiness was, when you confessed it just now? "
" Yes, by all means."
"I wonder if I'd better! I supposed it was not such as any man could inflict Excuse me! " He kept his eyes smilingly on the young fellow's face, as if to prevent his taking the audacity in bad part. " I don't know why I should say this to you, except that it really went through my mind, and I did you the wrong to
" I can forgive the wrong; it's so very far from the fact " — Ray began.
"Ah, you've already noticed that! " Mr. Kane interrupted.
" Noticed what? "
" That we can forgive people their injurious conjectures when they're wrong rather than when they're right? "
"No, I hadn't noticed," Ray confessed; and he added, " I was only thinking how impossible that was for me in a place where I haven't spoken to a woman yet."
If Mr. Kane tasted the "bitterness in a speech which Ray tried to carry off with a laugh, his words did not confess it. " It wasn't a reasoned conjecture, and I don't defend it; I'm only too glad to escape from it without offence. When I was of your age, a slight from a woman was the only thing that could have kept me from any pleasure that offered itself. But I understand that now youth is made differently."
" I don't see why," said Ray, and he quelled a desire he had to boast of his wounds; he permitted himself merely to put on an air of gloom.
"Why, I've been taught that modern society and civilization generally has so many consolations for unrequited affection that young men don't suffer from that sort of trouble anymore, or not deeply."
Ray was sensible that Mr. Kane's intrusiveness was justifiable upon the ground of friendly interest; and he was not able to repel what seemed like friendly interest. " It may be as you say, in New York; I've not been here long enough to judge."
"But in Midland things go on in the old way? Tell me something about Midland, and why anyone should ever leave Midland for New York? "
"I can't say, generally speaking," answered Ray, with pleasure in Kane's pursuit, " but I think that in my case Midland began it."
" Yes? "
Ray was willing enough to impart as much of his autobiography as related to the business change that had thrown him out of his place on the Echo, Then he sketched with objective airiness the sort of life one led in Midland, if one was a young man in society; and he found it no more than fair to himself to give some notion of his own local value in a graphic little account of the farewell dinner.
"Yes," said Mr. Kane, "I can imagine how you should miss all that, and I don't know that New York has anything so pleasant to offer. I fancy the conditions of society are incomparably different in Midland and in New York. You seem to me a race of shepherds and shepherdesses out there; your pretty world is like a dream of my own youth, when Boston was still only a large town, and was not so distinctly an aoristic Athens as it is now."
" I had half a mind to go to Boston with my book first," said Ray. "But somehow I thought there were more chances in New York."
"There are certainly more publishers," Kane admitted. " Whether there are more chances depends upon how much independent judgment there is among the publishers. Have you found them very judicial? "
" I don't quite understand what you mean."
" Did any one of them seem to be a man who would give your novel an unprejudiced reading if you took it to him and told him honestly that it had been rejected by all the others?"
"No, I can't say any of them did. But I don't know that I could give my manuscript an unprejudiced reading myself under the same circumstances. I certainly shouldn't blame any publisher who couldn't. Should you? "
" I? I blame nobody, my dear friend," said Kane. " That is the way I keep my temper. I should not blame you if Chapley & Co. declined your book, and you went to the rest of the trade carefully concealing from each publisher, the fact that he was not the first you had approached with it."
Ray laughed, but he winced, too. " I suppose that's what I should have to do. But Chapley & Co. haven't declined it yet."
" Ah, I'm glad of that. Not that you could really impose upon anyone. There would be certain infallible signs in your manuscript that would betray you: an air of use; little private marks and memoranda of earlier readers; the smell of their different brands of tobacco and sachet powder."
"I shouldn't try to impose upon anyone," Ray began, with a flush of indignation, which ended in shame. " What would you do under the same circumstances? " he demanded, with desperation.
" My dear friend! My dear boy," Mr. Kane protested. "I am not censuring you. It's said that Bismarck found it an advantage to introduce truth even into diplomacy. He discovered there was nothing deceived like it; nobody believed him. Some successful advertisers have made it work in commercial affairs. You mustn't expect me to say what I should do under the same circumstances; the circumstances couldn't be the same. I am not the author of a manuscript novel with a potential public of tens of thousands. But you can imagine that as the proprietor of a volume of essays which has a certain sale — Mr. Brandreth used that fatal term in speaking of my book, I suppose? "
" No, I don't remember that he did," said Ray.
" He was kinder than I could have expected. It is the death-knell of hope to the devoted author when his publisher tells him that his book will always have a certain sale; he is expressing in a pitying euphemism of the trade that there is no longer any chance for it, no happy accident in the future, no fortuity; it is dead. As the author of a book with a certain sale, I feel myself exempt from saying what I should do in your place. But I'm very glad it hasn't come to the ordeal with you. Let us hope you won't be tempted. Let us hope that Messrs. Chapley & Co. will be equal to the golden opportunity offered them, and gradually — snatch it."
Kane smiled, and Hay laughed out He knew that he was being played upon, but he believed the touch was kindly, and even what he felt an occasional cold cynicism in it had the fascination that cynicism always has for the young when it does not pass from theory to conduct; when it does that, it shocks. He thought that Mr. Kane was something like Warrington in Pendennis, and again something like Coverdale in Blithedale Romance. He valued him for that; he was sure he had a history; and when he now rose, Ray said: " Oh, must you go? " with eager regret.
" Why, I had thought of asking you to come with me. I'm going for a walk in the Park, and I want to stop on the way for a moment to see an old friend of mine " — he hesitated, and then added — "a man whom I was once intimately associated with in some joint hopes we had for reconstructing the world. I think you will be interested in him, as a type, even if you don't like him."
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