But as Manton only smiled at this and showed no disposition to desist, she continued in an imploring voice—
“Don’t go in! Mr. Narcissus, the editor, is there! I will get the sleeve and put it on immediately! Don’t disturb us now; I am just reading to him the MS. of my new novel, which I hope he will undertake to publish in his paper!”
“Well,” said Manton, quietly stepping back, “it must be confessed you are prompt in finding alternatives! I wish you success in your new publishing enterprise! And I suppose this bare arm is to have nothing to do with his anticipated commentary upon your text!”
Manton turned away with a light laugh, but the look which was sent after him would have chilled his very soul could he have met it. His sneering conjecture was only too true. She had already fastened upon a new victim. But for once it turned out that it was “file cut file.” She had at last met her equal in all that was detestable—her peer in baseness, and only an under-graduate to her in cunning.
She had selected him as she did all her victims, with reference to social and pecuniary position. He was at the time a co-editor and ostensible part-owner of one of the most brilliant and successful weekly papers of New York. She had always aspired to command an “organ.” And anything in that line, from a review down to a thumb-paper, to her restless ambition, was better than nothing. For by a process more hideous to the world than anomalous in fact, she had come to reconcile any degree of private intrigue, by balancing it with the value of abstract teachings for the public good, under that liberal postulate of the school to which she belonged, that the end justifies the means.
In setting herself down for a regular siege before this newspaper establishment, she had first in her eye, all three of the associate owners. It was a matter of entire indifference to her, through which she succeeded in obtaining an entrance to its columns, which might lead to her control of the future tone of the paper. She opened the investment in the usual form; first, by visiting them alone, in their offices; then by bombarding them, from the distance of her own writing-table, with a constant hail of those snow-white missives, with the sugared contents of which we have before been made acquainted.
They were each privately and successively pronounced in their own ears, and under seal of those crow-quilled envelopes, to be “naughty boys,” whose proud and wilful natures were driving them headlong to ruin—to be sons of genius, who only required to be saved from themselves and their own vices, by her, to become the illustrious reformers of the age! One of them smoked too much—was making a “chimney of his nose,” through which he was exhaling spiritual mightiness, that might equalise him with the cherubim, if only free! But this unhappily did not tell; the shrewd and wary business-man, who knew more about coppers than cherubim, and was by no means conscious of the spiritual prowess she so pathetically attributed to him, “smoked” her, or her motive at least, and threw the dainty correspondence aside, with a jeering laugh.
The other, who was really chief editor, and a handsome and talented fellow, might not have got off so well, had he not been pre-occupied, and predisposed to bestow the exalted attributes which she had discovered in him, in another direction. He was duly grateful to her, however, for the discovery that he was a child of genius; and, though a little disposed to be suspicious, could not, for some time, restrain the expression of his delight at having met with a lady possessing such unquestionable and extraordinary discrimination.
He was a jovial and generous fellow, though very shrewd and suspicious withal. She was not quite aware of the last two attributes, and therefore expected a great deal from him, as he proverbially drank too much. She therefore opened her batteries mercilessly upon this weakness, which, as she affirmed, combined with the horrible practice of chewing to excess, was demonising an “Archangel! Dragging down the loftiest spirit of his age! A spirit that might guide the destinies of the human race, and rule it, whether for evil or for good.” She particularly desired his salvation. She prayed for it, day and night! She had a spiritual monition that he could be saved; and the fact was, he would be saved, if he would only listen to her counsel! Indeed, she might guarantee he should be saved, if he would only give up his poisons, and dedicate the columns of his paper to the great cause of progressive hygiene and popular physiology. In a word, the fact was, he must be saved, whether he wanted to be or not!
But the trouble was, our editor was a person who would do nothing on compulsion. And when he found that such a powerful edict had gone forth, that he must be saved, he swore, in his benighted obstinacy, that he would be —— if he would!