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throngs—this new note of life, everywhere audible, is itself so surprising and absorbing that the mind is insensibly withdrawn from the contemplation of private griefs and memories.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.