“That’s the answer, hey? He told me ’bout a feller he’d met once at the Antlers who made twenty thousan’ a year just by writin’ novels ’bout s’ciety. Now, Hawarden knows all ’bout the s’ciety game. I sh’d think he’d write such stories fine.”
“The stories of Jack’s that I’ve read,” answered Caine, “all centre around labor problems and other things the boy knows as little about as if he had taken a postgraduate course in ignorance. He couldn’t write a society story if he tried.”
“Why not? I sh’d think—”
“Because he’s been born and brought up in that atmosphere. A society man could no more write about society than he could write a love sonnet to his own sister.”
“But that kind of stories get written,” faltered Caleb, grubbing vainly for a possible jest in his friend’s puzzling dictum. “Somebody must write ’em.”
“On the contrary,” denied Caine. “Nobodies write them. For instance, there is a man who was born in South Brooklyn or somewhere; and spent a year or two in Europe. So much for his environment. He used to write charming stories. They were fairly vibrant with satire, humor, color and a ceaseless rush of action. His nature-descriptions were revelations in word-painting. I always read every line he wrote. So did some other people. But only some. Then he moved to a little village, away from the centre of things, and forthwith began to write novels of New York Society.
“It was very easy. The Sunday papers cost him no more than they cost anyone else. He fell to describing the innermost life of New York’s innermost smart set. He scorned to depict a single character that wasn’t worth at least a million. Silver, cut glass and diamonds strewed his pages; till one longed for brown bread and pie. He flashed the fierce white light of unbiased ignorance into the darkest corners of a society that never was by sea or land. And what was the result? In a day he leaped to immortality. The shop-girl read him so eagerly that she rode past her station. The youth behind the counter learned to rattle off the list of his books as easily as the percentages of the base ball-clubs. In the walks of life that he so vividly portrayed, such people as read at all made amused comments that could never by any possibility reach his ears. We others who had reveled in his earlier books felt as we might if an adored brother has left the diplomatic service to become a bartender. But we were in the minority. So we re-read Browning’s ‘Lost Leader,’ dropped the subject and sought in vain for a new idol.”
“I s’pose so,” agreed Caleb, hazily, recalling his wandered attention as Caine paused. “I wish I hadn’t got that tel’gram.”
It was after midnight when Caleb Conover returned to his room. Three more telegrams awaited him, as well as a penciled request that he call up Magdeburg Hotel on the long-distance telephone. While he was profanely waiting for the operator to establish the connection, Caleb ripped open the telegrams one after the other. All were from Jack. Each bore the same burden as the message that had come early in the evening. The last of the trio added: