“Go and ask for a job,” said Johnson, the omniscient, when he heard of the failure. “Suggestion on the part of the editor is the better part of valour in the writer.”
“What do you mean?” asked George. He had supposed that there was nothing he did not know in this connection.
“They won’t take articles on general subjects without a deal of interest and urging,” answered the other. “Get introduced to them in person. I will do it with most of them. Then go to them and say, ‘I am a very remarkable young man, though you do not seem to know it. I will write anything about anything in the earth or under the earth. Sanskrit, botany and the differential calculus are my especially strong points, but the North Pole has great attractions for me, I am strong in theology and political economy, and, if anything, I would rather spend a year in writing up the Fiji Islands than not. If you have nothing in this line, there is music and high art, in which I am sound, I have a taste for architecture and I understand practical lobster-fishing. Have you anything for me to do?’ That is the way to talk to these men,” Johnson added with a smile. “Try it.”
George laughed.
“But that is not literature,” he objected.
“Not literature? Everything that can be written about is literature, just as everything that can be eaten is man — in another form. You can learn as much English in writing up lobster-fishing, as in trying to compose a five-act tragedy, and you will be paid for it into the bargain. Besides, if you are ever going to write anything worth reading, you must see more and think less. Don’t read books for a while; read things and people. Thinking too much, without seeing, is like eating too much — it makes your writing bilious.”
“This is the critic’s recipe for acquiring fame in letters!” exclaimed George.
“Fame in letters is a sort of stuffed bugbear. You can frighten children with it, but it belongs to the days of witches and hobgoblins. The object of literature nowadays is to amuse without doing harm. If you do that well you will be famous and rich.”
“You are utterly cynical to-day, Johnson. Are you in earnest in what you advise me to do?”
“Perfectly. Try everything. Offer your services to write anything. Among all the magazines and weeklies there is sure to be one that is in difficulties because it cannot get some particular article written. Don’t be too quick to say you understand the subject, if you don’t. Say you will try it. A man may get up almost any subject in six weeks, and it is a good thing for the mind, once in a long time. Try everything, I say. Make a stir. Let these people see you — make them see you, if they don’t want to. It is not time lost. You can use them all in your books some day. There is an age when it is better to wear out shoe-leather than pens — when the sweat of the brow is worth a dozen bottles of ink. Don’t sit over your desk yelping your discontent, while your real brain is rusting. Confound it all! It is the will that does it, the stir, the energy, the beating at other people’s doors, grinding up their stairs, making them feel that they must not lose the chance of using a man who can do so much, making them ashamed to send you away. Do you think I got to be where I am without a rough and tumble fight at the first? Take everything that comes into your way, do it as well as you know how, with all your might, and keep up a constant howl for more. They will respect you in spite of themselves.”
The pale young man’s steel-blue eyes flashed, the purple veins stood out on his white clenched hands and there was a smile of triumph in his face and a ring of victory in his voice. He had fought them all and had got what he wanted, by talent, by industry, but above all by his restless and untiring energy, and he was proud of it.
To George Wood, in his poverty, it seemed very little, after all, to be the literary editor of a daily paper. That was not the position he must win, if he would marry Constance Fearing.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUMMER PASSED quickly away without bringing any new element into George’s life. He did not reject Johnson’s advice, but he did not follow it to the letter. His instinct was against the method suggested by his friend, and he felt that he had not the assurance to follow it out. He was too sensitive and proud to employ his courage in besieging persons who did not want him. Nevertheless he found work to do, and his position was improved, though his writings still failed to attract any attention. He had imagined that there was but a step from the composition of magazine articles to the making of a book, but he soon discovered the fallacy of the idea, and almost regretted the old days of “book-tasting.”
Meanwhile, his thoughts dwelt much on Constance, and he adorned the temple of his idol with everything upon which, figuratively speaking, he could lay his hands. Strange to say, her absence during the summer was a relief to him. It made the weakness of his position and the futility of his hopes seem less apparent, and it gave him time to make at least a step in the direction of success. He wrote to her, as often as he dared, and twice in the course of the summer she answered with short letters that had in his eyes a suspicious savour of kindness rather than of anything even distantly approaching to affection. Nevertheless those were great days in his calendar on which these missives came. The notes were read over every morning and evening until Constance returned, and were put in a place of safety during the day and night.
George looked forward with the greatest anxiety to Miss Fearing’s return. He had long felt that her sister’s antagonism was one of the numerous and apparently insurmountable obstacles that barred his path, and he dreaded lest Grace’s influence should, in the course of the long summer, so work upon Constance’s mind as to break the slender thread that bound her to him. As regards Grace’s intention he was by no means wrong. She lost no opportunity of explaining to Constance that her friendship for George Wood was little short of ridiculous, that the man knew he had no future and was in pursuit of nothing but money, that his writings showed that he belonged to the poorest class of amateurs, that men who were to succeed were always heard of from boyhood, at school, at college and in their first efforts and that Constance was allowing her good nature to get the better of her common-sense in encouraging such a fellow. In short there was very little that Grace left unsaid. But though George had foreseen all this, as Grace, on her part, had determined beforehand upon her course of action during the summer, neither Grace nor George had understood the effect that such talk would produce upon her whom it was meant to influence. There was in Constance’s apparently gentle nature an element of quiet resistance which, in reality, it was not hard to rouse. Like many very good and very conscientious people, she detested advice and abominated interference, even on the part of those she loved best. Her attachment for her sister was sincere in its way, though not very strong, and it did not extend to a blind respect for Grace’s opinions. Grace could be wrong, like other people, and Grace was hasty and hot-tempered, prejudiced and not free from a certain sort of false pride. These were assuredly not the defects of Constance’s character, at least in her own opinion.
Her opposition was aroused and she began to show it. Indeed, her two letters to George were both written immediately after conversations had taken place in which Grace had spoken of him with more than usual bitterness. She felt as though she owed him some reparation for the ill-treatment he got at her sister’s hands, and this accounted in part for the flavour of kindness which George detected in her words. The situation was further strained by the arrival of one of the periodicals which contained an article by him. The sisters both read it, and Constance was pleased with it. In an indirect way, too, she felt flattered, for it looked as though George were beginning to follow her advice.
“It is trash,” said Grace authoritatively, as she threw the magazine aside.
Constance allowed a full minute to elapse before she answered, during which she seemed to be intently watching the sail of a boat that was slowly working its way up the river. The two girls had paused between one visit and another to rest themselves in a place they owned upon the Hudson. The weather was intensely hot, and it was towards ev
ening.
“It is not trash,” said Constance quietly. “You are quite mistaken. You are completely blinded by your prejudice.”
Grace was very much surprised, for it was unlike Constance to turn upon her in such a way.
“I think it is trash for two reasons,” she said, with a short laugh. “First, because my judgment tells me it is, and secondly because I know that George Wood could not possibly write anything else.”
“You can hardly deny that you are prejudiced after that speech. Do you know what you will do, if you go on in this way? You will make me fall in love with Mr. Wood and marry him, out of sheer contrariety.”
“Oh no!” laughed Grace. “You would not marry him. At the last minute you would throw him over, and then he would bring an action against you for breach of promise with a view to the damages.”
Constance suddenly grew very pale. She turned from the window where she was standing, crossed the small room and stood still before her sister.
“Do you mean that?” she asked very coldly.
Grace was frightened, for the first time in her life, but she did her best to hide it.
“What difference does it make to you, whether I mean it or not?” she inquired with a rather scornful smile.
“This difference — that if you think such things, you and I may as well part company before we quarrel any further.”
“Ah — you love him, then? I did not know.” Grace laughed nervously.
“I do not love him, but if I did I should not be ashamed to say so to you or to the whole world. But I like him very, very much, and I will not hear him talked of as you talk of him. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly. Nothing could be clearer,” said Grace with a contemptuous curl of the lip.
“Then I hope you will remember,” Constance answered.
Grace did remember. Indeed, for some time she could think of nothing else. It seemed clear enough to her that something more than friendship was needed to account for the emotion she had seen in her sister’s face. It was the first time in her recollection, too, that Constance had ever been really angry, and Grace was not inclined to rouse her anger a second time. She changed her tactics and ignored George Wood altogether, never mentioning him nor reading anything that he sent to Constance. But this mode of treating the question proved unsatisfactory, for it was clear that Wood wrote often, and there was nothing to prove that Constance did not answer all his letters. Fortunately the two sisters were rarely alone together during the rest of the summer, and their opportunities of disagreeing were not numerous. They were not in reality as fond of each other as the world thought, or as they appeared to be. Their natures were too different, and at the same time the difference was not of that kind in which each character seems to fill a want in the other. On the contrary the points in which they were unlike were precisely those which most irritated the other’s sensibilities. They had never before quarrelled nor been so near to a quarrel as they were in the course of the conversation just recorded, but they were in reality very far from being harmonious.
The devoted affection of their mother had kept them together while she had lived, and, to some extent, had survived her, the memory of her still exercising a strong influence over both. Constance, too, was naturally very pacific, and rarely resented anything Grace said, in jest or in earnest. Grace was often annoyed by what she called her sister’s sweetness, and it was that very quality which prevented the other from retaliating. She had now shown that she could turn, and fiercely, if once aroused, and Grace respected her the more for having shown that she had a temper.
Enough has been said to show that George’s fear that Constance would think less well of him through Grace’s influence, was without foundation. She even went so far as to send for him as soon as she returned to New York in the autumn. It was a strange meeting, for there was constraint on both sides, and at the same time each felt the necessity of showing the other that no change had taken place for the worse in their mutual relations.
Constance was surprised to find how very favourably George Wood compared with the men she had seen during the summer — men all more or less alike in her eyes, but nevertheless representing in her imagination the general type of what the gentleman is supposed to be, the type of the man of her own class, the mate of her own species. Grace had talked so much, in the early part of the season, of George’s inferior social position, of his awkward manner, and, generally, of his defects, that Constance had almost feared to find that she had been deceived at first and that there was a little truth in her sister’s words. One glance, one phrase of his, sufficed to set her mind at rest. He might have peculiarities, but they were not apparent in his way of dressing, of entering a room or of pronouncing the English language. He was emphatically what he ought to be, and she felt a keen pleasure in taking up her intercourse with him at the point where it had been interrupted more than four months earlier.
And now the exigencies of this history require that we should pass rapidly over the period that followed. It was an uneventful time for all concerned. George Wood worked with all his might and produced some very creditable papers on a variety of subjects, gradually attracting a certain amount of notice to himself, and advancing, as he supposed, as fast as was possible in his career. Success, of the kind he craved, still seemed very far away in the dim future, though there were not wanting those who believed that he might not wait long for it. Foremost among those was Constance Fearing. To her there was a vast difference between the anonymous scribbler of small notices whom she had known a year ago, and the promising young writer who appeared to her to have a reputation already, because most of her friends now knew who he was, had read one or more of his articles and were glad to meet him when occasion offered. She felt indeed that he had not yet found out his best talent, but her instinct told her that the time could not be very distant when it would break out of its own impulse and surprise the world by its brilliancy. That he actually possessed great and rare gifts she no longer doubted.
Next to Constance, the Sherrington Trimms were the loudest in their praise of George’s doings. Totty could talk of nothing else when she came to the house in Washington Square, and her husband never failed to read everything George wrote, and to pat him on the back after each fresh effort. Even George’s father began to relent and to believe that there might be something in literature after all. But he showed very little enthusiasm until, one day, an old acquaintance with whom he had not spoken for years, crossed the street and shook hands with him, congratulated him upon his boy’s “doing so well.” Then Jonah Wood felt that the load of anxiety he had borne for so many years was suddenly lifted from his shoulders. People thought his boy was “doing well”! He had not hoped to be told that spontaneously by any one for years to come. The dreary look began to fade out of his grey face, giving way to something that looked very like happiness.
George himself was the least appreciative of his own success. Even Johnson, who was sparing of praise in general, wrote occasional notes in his paper expressive of his satisfaction at his friend’s work and generally containing some bit of delicate criticism or learned reference that lent them weight and caused them to be reprinted into other newspapers.
So the winter came and went again and the month of May came round once more. George was with Constance one afternoon almost exactly a year from the day on which he had first told her of his love. Their relations had been very peaceful and pleasant of late, though George was not so often alone with her as in former times. The period of mourning for the girls’ mother was past and many people came to the house. George himself had gradually made numerous acquaintances and led a more social life than formerly, finding interest, as Johnson had predicted, in watching people instead of poring over books. He was asked to dinner by many persons who had known his father and were anxious to make amends for having judged him unjustly, and when they had once received him into their houses, they liked him and did what they could to show it. Moreover he was modest and
reticent in regard to himself and talked well of current topics. Insensibly he had begun to acquire social popularity and to forget much of his boyish cynicism. He fancied that he went into society merely because it sometimes gave him an opportunity of meeting Constance, but he was too natural and young not to like it for itself.
“Shall we not go out?” he asked, when he found her alone in the drawing-room.
Constance looked up and smiled, as though she understood his thought. He was afraid that Grace would enter the room and spoil his visit, as had happened more than once, and Constance feared the same thing. Neither had ever said as much to the other, but there was a tacit understanding between them, and their intimacy had developed so far that Constance made no secret of wishing to be alone with him when he came to the house. She smiled in spite of herself and George smiled in return.
“Yes. We can take a turn in the Square,” she said. “It will be — cooler, you know.” A soft laugh seemed to explain the hesitation, and George felt very happy.
A few minutes later they were walking side by side under the great trees. Instinctively they kept away from the Fearings’ house — Grace might chance to be at the window.
“It was almost a year ago,” said George, suddenly.
“What?”
“That I told you I loved you. You think differently of me now, do you not?”
“A little differently, perhaps,” Constance answered. Then, feeling that she was blushing, she turned her face away and spoke rapidly. “Yes and no. I think more of you — that is to say, I think better of you. You have done so much in this year. I begin to see that you are more energetic than I fancied you were.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 500
