For a while he prowled around his bookcases, grumbling over the many useless volumes, which like unwelcome tramps had lain hidden snug in their berths among those dear to him. One after another he routed these vagabonds out of their nests, and flung them in a pile on the floor for Matilda to cart away in her blue apron, and present them to the ash-man if she chose. Some of these trashy novels had the ill-luck to be discovered in the company of the product of such able masters as Thackeray and Dickens, Scott and Fielding, Balzac, Hugo, and Maupassant. These latter in French, which he read fluently. One yellow paper-covered novel he raised above his head and sent slamming to the floor.
“Trash!” he cried aloud—a habit with him when he was roused and was forced to speak his mind for the benefit of his own ears. “Trash! That’s what they want nowadays—a novel never gets interesting to them until they get to the divorce—artificial heroines who make you shudder, whose morals and manners are no better than a trull’s in a tavern, and heroes whom I always feel like kicking—a lot of well-dressed cads. As for style, it’s gone to the dogs. They do not even speak correct English, much less write it. There’s not one of them who could produce a page of Thackeray or Flaubert if they were to hang for it. What they write for is the publisher and his check. It’s that infernal check that has prodded on more writers to ruin than it ever helped. The more money they can make, the more mediocre and sensational they get—scarcely a page that is not cooked up like a pudding—one quart of sentimentality to two heaping pints of sensation, add a scant teaspoonful of pathos, sprinkle with a happy ending, and serve hot before the last novel gets cold. Slop! and drivel!” he snarled, scraping out the bowl of his strongest pipe, and stuffing it with fine-cut Virginia that would have bitten any less hardy tongue than Enoch’s. He searched in vain for a match; discovered Rose Van Cortlandt’s invitation, tore it in two, rolled one half into a lighter, kindled it over the blazing logs in his fireplace, lighted his favorite brierwood, and began to snort and puff the smoke through his nostrils, his pipe doggedly clenched between his teeth, his opinion of modern literature gruffly subsiding in grunts. Then he returned to his books.
He plucked out another—“Muriel’s Choice”—and turned to the fly-leaf. On it was hastily scribbled in pencil in a woman’s angular handwriting—all ups and downs: “Do read this, Mr. Crane; so sorry to have missed you. Emma Jackson.” He turned the pages with a rip under his thumb.
“About as light as Emma,” he remarked, recalling that person to his mind, whose attentions had annoyed him when he was a young student at law. He was about to send it spinning to the pile when he noticed it contained several woodcut illustrations depicting the lovelorn and unhappy Muriel at various stages of her romantic history. Muriel seemed always to be waiting for him—at the old turnstile ’neath the mournful drooping willows; at the rain-flecked library window, listening for the grating sound of his carriage wheels; again at the stile. This time she had brought her Newfoundland dog.
“They’ll do for the children to color,” reflected Enoch, referring to a hospital charity he never mentioned to others.
He laid the book aside, straightened up, drew a deep, courageous breath, and riveted his gaze on the centre-table.
“What’ll I do with all that?” he exclaimed aloud, scratching his gray head, half tempted to dump the whole of it into his bedroom closet, and sort it later. Then he realized there were important papers buried under the pamphlets and books, bills and receipts that needed filing, and more than one unanswered letter.
He began with the books, mostly scientific works, which had lately served him as reference in an article on economics he had written for the Atlantic Monthly modestly over his initials, and which had been widely quoted. These filled the gaps left by the pile on the floor. The letters, bills, and receipts he stowed away in the drawers of an old-fashioned mahogany desk beside his fire. One of these drawers, the small one over his inkstand, was locked. This he rarely opened, though he carried its flat key on the end of his watch-chain—had, in fact, for years.
Matilda thought it was where he kept his money. Had his strong-box been open on the table, its contents would have been as safe with Matilda and Moses as if under the protection of his own pocket.
The old room, now that the books were in place, the table cleared and neatly arranged, and the chairs pushed back into cosey corners, began to assume an air of hospitality, and that is precisely why Enoch had cleared it up. There remained, however, a final touch of welcome, which he put on his hat and hurried out for—a gorgeous bunch of red Jacqueminot roses. These he arranged in an old Chinese porcelain bowl on the centre-table. This done, he surveyed his domain, with a feeling of relief and satisfaction, and rang for Matilda.