So he might have gone on forgetting, if Stephen Eversedge, his junior partner and cousin, had not peeped anxiously in at the door. “They said you’d gone away and then come back. I thought I’d just ask if anything was the matter,” he excused himself to the master mind.
“The matter is, we’ve got hold of the most wonderful human document—good God, yes, and soul document!—that any house in this country or any other has ever published!” The words burst out from Sibley like bullets from a mitrailleuse.
Denin hardly knew what to think of the telegram which came next morning. It asked him to call at once on Mr. Sibley; but Denin, warned that the manuscript story could not be read for a week or more, did not dream that the publisher had already raced through it. His fear was that a mere glance at the first page had been enough, showing the skilled critic that the work lacked literary value; or else that the bulk was insufficient to make a book. Mr. Sibley might, in kindness, wish to end the author’s suspense, and put him out of misery.
When the message arrived, Denin was reading and marking newspaper advertisements. He meant to go without delay to several places of business that offered more or less suitable work; but he was ready to risk missing any chance, no matter how good, when the fate of his ewe lamb was at stake. He was too despondent at the thought of its rejection to plan placing it elsewhere, but he could not bear to lose time in reclaiming it.
He felt, as he was led once more into Sibley’s private office, as if he had to face a painful operation without anesthetics, so sensitive had he come to be on the subject of his story—the manuscript of his heart, written in the blood of his sacrifice. There lay the familiar pages on the desk, all ready, he did not doubt, to be wrapped up and handed back to him. He had so schooled himself to a refusal that the publisher’s first words made his head swim. He could not believe that he heard aright.
“Well, Mr. Sanbourne, I congratulate you!” Sibley said, getting up from his desk-chair and holding out a cordial hand. “We congratulate ourselves on the chance of publishing your book.”
Denin took the hand held out and moved it up and down mechanically, but did not speak. Following the publisher’s extreme graciousness his silence might have seemed boorish, but Sibley knew how to interpret it. He realized that the other was struck dumb, and he felt a thrill of romantic delight in the situation, in his own august power to confer benefits. He was not conducting himself as a business man in this case, but he knew by sureness of instinct that the strange amateur would take no mean advantage of his confessed enthusiasm.
“We think,” he went on, “that you have written something very original and very beautiful. Without being sentimental, it’s full of that kind of indescribable sentiment which goes straight to the heart. It will be a short book, only about fifty thousand words, or even less; but that doesn’t matter, because a word added or a word left out would make a false note. The thing’s an inspiration. You’ve got a big success before you. You ought to be a happy man, Mr. Sanbourne.”
“You make me feel as if I were in a dream,” said Denin.