“Oh, no,” returned Davenport, indolently. “I won't refuse. I'll accept the commission with pleasure—a certain amount of pleasure, that is. There was a time when I should have danced a break-down for joy, probably, at this opportunity. But a piece of good luck, strange as it is to me, doesn't matter now. Still, as it has visited me at last, I'll receive it politely. In as much as I have plenty of time for this work, and as Mr. Rogers seems to wish me to do it, I should be churlish if I declined. The money too, is an object—I won't conceal that fact. To think of a chance to earn a little money, coming my way without the slightest effort on my part! You look substantial, Mr. Larcher, but I'm still tempted to think this is all a dream.”
Larcher laughed. “Well, as to effort,” said he, “I don't think I should be here now with that accepted manuscript for you to illustrate, if I hadn't taken a good deal of pains to press my work on the attention of editors.”
“Oh, I don't mean to say that your prosperity, and other men's, is due to having good things thrust upon you in this way. But if you do owe all to your own work, at least your work does bring a fair amount of reward, your efforts are in a fair measure successful. But not so with me. The greatest fortune I could ever have asked would have been that my pains should bring their reasonable price, as other men's have done. Therefore, this extreme case of good luck, small as it is, is the more to be wondered at. The best a man has a right to ask is freedom from what people call habitual bad luck. That's an immunity I've never had. My labors have been always banned—except when the work has masqueraded as some other man's. In that case they have been blessed. It will seem strange to you, Mr. Larcher, but whatever I've done in my own name has met with wretched pay and no recognition, while work of mine, no better, when passed off as another man's, has won golden rewards—for him—in money and reputation.”
“It does seem strange,” admitted Larcher.
“What can account for it?”
“Do you know what a 'Jonah' is, in the speech of the vulgar?”
“Yes; certainly.”
“Well, people have got me tagged with that name. I bring ill luck to enterprises I'm concerned in, they say. That's a fatal reputation, Mr. Larcher. It wasn't deserved in the beginning, but now that I have it, see how the reputation itself is the cause of the apparent ill luck. Take this thing, for instance.” He held up a sheet of music paper, whereon he had evidently been writing before Larcher's arrival. “A song, supposed to be sentimental. As the idea is somewhat novel, the words happy, and the tune rather quaint, I shall probably get a publisher for it, who will offer me the lowest royalty. What then? Its fame and sale—or whether it shall have any—will depend entirely on what advertising it gets from being sung by professional singers. I have taken the precaution to submit the idea and the air to a favorite of the music halls, and he has promised to sing it. Now, if he sang it on the most auspicious occasion, making it the second or third song of his turn, having it announced with a flourish on the programme, and putting his best voice and style into it, it would have a chance of popularity. Other singers would want it, it would be whistled around, and thousands of copies sold. But will he do that?”
“I don't see why he shouldn't,” said Larcher.
“Oh, but he knows why. He remembers I am a Jonah. What comes from me carries ill luck. He'll sing the song, yes, but he won't hazard any auspicious occasion on it. He'll use it as a means of stopping encores when he's tired of them; he'll sing it hurriedly and mechanically; he'll make nothing of it on the programme; he'll hide the name of the author, for fear by the association of the names some of my Jonahship might extend to him. So, you see, bad luck will attend my song; so, you see, the name of bad luck brings bad luck. Not that there is really such a thing as luck. Everything that occurs has a cause, an infinite line of causes. But a man's success or failure is due partly to causes outside of his control, often outside of his ken. As, for instance, a sudden change of weather may defeat a clever general, and thrust victory upon his incompetent adversary. Now when these outside causes are adverse, and prevail, we say a man has bad luck. When they favor, and prevail, he has good luck. It was a rapid succession of failures, due partly to folly and carelessness of my own, I admit, but partly to a run of adverse conjunctures far outside my sphere of influence, that got me my unlucky name in the circles where I hunt a living. And now you are warned, Mr. Larcher. Do you think you are safe in having my work associated with yours, as Mr. Rogers proposes? It isn't too late to draw back.”