“The beasts!” she cried, with quivering lips.
“Don’t be silly, Letty!” but whatever consolation she had attempted would have been wrong. He was in that mood. “Of course, they can’t take everything that gets offered to them. My stuff’s not good enough, that’s all. They—they wrote it wasn’t good enough,” he finished, asking again for that sympathy which he flung back when it came. He had been divided by the pride which bade him keep his shame to himself, and a childish longing for solace and encouragement and the presence of someone who believed in him. Not sure yet which need was the stronger, he announced his defeat casually, as though it hardly affected him, hotly resented Letty’s correct assumption that his world lay shattered; and then, almost boasting the humiliation, showed her a note from the publisher’s reader, who had kindly taken the trouble to point out how and why his work was not marketable, instead of merely enclosing the formal slip: “—unable to make an offer.” “You fail to convince,” was the phrase which left most sting.
“So you see I’m a failure, Letty. Not a publisher will look at the book. This fellow knows what he’s talking about.” Sebastian refused the muffins she tendered him.
“You mean—it will never get into print, you don’t think?”
“Never. But it isn’t that; it’s—Heron.”
“Your friend?” She remembered the two had been a great deal together, at the Farme.
He nodded, too full of bitterness to speak. Why was it that all his burnt-offerings, like Cain’s, were doomed to be beaten, sullen fumes, along the earth, instead of mounting in steady columns of smoke, upwards to their destination? That he might be worshipping false gods, did not for a moment present itself as a possible solution; Sebastian’s loyalty was convinced the sacrifices were at fault, not the altar. The book was Stuart’s book, for Stuart, of Stuart, to Stuart,—the whole declension. The author had sweated his share, and now the publishers withheld theirs, and all the accomplished labour was in vain. It was maddening—
“I wanted it out!” Sebastian broke out, aloud.
“He wanted it in print, of course he did,” passionately Letty shared his mutinous sorrow. And when he had gone, and she was in her room, changing into an evening blouse, she fingered the letter she had not had the courage to show him; all her joy gone from the anticipation of her story in print, since thus it would only serve to point a contrast.
“I’ve half a mind not to send it,” picking up that other letter into which was folded her eager acceptance of the five-guinea offer.