One afternoon, in the midst of a game of lawn-tennis, a telegram was brought to him.
“Rob Roy and Co. publish book immediately England and America. Have undertaken that you accept royalty ten per cent retail advertised price. Wire reply. C. F.”
George possessed a very considerable power of concealing his emotions, but this news was almost too much for his equanimity. He thrust the despatch into his pocket and went on playing, but he lost the game in a shameful fashion and was roundly abused by his cousin Mamie Trimm, who chanced to be his partner. Mamie and her mother were stopping in the same house, by what Mrs. Sherrington Trimm considered a rather unfortunate accident, since Mamie was far too fond of George already. In reality, the excellent hostess had an idea that George loved the girl, and as the match seemed most appropriate in her eyes, she had brought them together on purpose.
As soon as possible he slipped away, put on his flannel jacket and went to the telegraph office, reading the despatch he had received over and over again as he hurried along the path, and trying to compose his answer at the same time. Constance’s message seemed amazingly neat, business-like and concise, and he wondered whether some one else had not been concerned in the affair. The phrase about the royalty did not sound like a woman’s expression, though she might have copied it from the publisher’s letter.
George had formerly imagined that if his first performance were really in danger of being published, he should do everything in his power to prevent such a catastrophe. He felt no such impulse now, however. Messrs. Rob Roy and Company were very serious people, great publishers, whose name alone gave a book a chance of success. They bore an exceptional reputation in the world of books, and George knew very well that they would not publish trash. But he was not elated by the news, however much surprised he might be. It was strange, indeed, that a firm of such good judgment should have accepted his novel, but it could not but be a failure, all the same. He would get the proofs as soon as possible, and he would do what he could to make the work decently presentable by inserting plentiful improvements.
His answer to Constance’s telegram was short.
“Deplore catastrophe. Pity public. Thank publisher. Agree terms. Where are proofs? G. W.”
By the time the proofs were ready, George was once more in New York, though Constance had not yet returned. He was hard at work upon his second book and looked with some disgust at the package of printed matter that lay folded as it had come, upon his table. Nevertheless he opened the bundle and looked at them.
“Confound them!” he exclaimed. “They have sent me a paged proof instead of galleys!”
It was evident that he could not insert many changes, where the matter was already arranged in book form, and he anticipated endless annoyance in pasting in extensive “riders” of writing-paper in order to get room for the vast changes he considered necessary.