Section 8. Thyrsis had waited a week, and then written the second publisher, and received a reply to the effect that at least two weeks were needed for the consideration of a manuscript. And meantime his last penny was gone, and he was living on Corydon’s money. It was clear that he must earn something at once; and so he had to leave her to study and practice in her own room, while he cudgelled his brains and tormented his soul with hack-work.
He tried his verses again; but he found that the spring had dried up in him. Life was now too sombre a thing, the happy spontaneous jingles came no more. And what he did by main force of will sounded hollow and vapid to him—and must have sounded so to the editors, who sent them back.
Then he tried book-reviewing; but oh, the ghastly farce of book-reviewing! To read futile writing and sham writing of a hundred degrading varieties—and never dare to utter a truth about them! To labor instead to put one’s self in the place of the school-girl reader and the tired shop-clerk reader and the sentimental married-woman reader, and imagine what they would think about the book, and what they would like to have said about it! To take these little pieces of dishonesty to an office, and sit by trembling while they were read, and receive two dollars apiece for them if they were published, and nothing at all if one had been so lacking in cunning as to let the editor think that the book was not worth the space!
However, Thyrsis had cunning enough to earn the cost of his room and his food for two weeks more. Then one day the postman brought him a letter, the inscription of which made his heart give a throb. He ripped the envelope open and read a communication from the second publisher:
“We have been interested in your manuscript, and while we do not feel that we can undertake its publication, we should like an opportunity to talk with you about it.”
“What does that mean?” asked Corydon, trembling.
“God knows,” he answered. “I’ll go and see them this morning.”
When he came back, it was to sink into a chair and stare in front of him with a savage frown. “Don’t ask me!” he said, to Corydon. “Don’t ask!”
“Please tell me!” cried the girl. “Did you see them?”
“Yes,” said Thyrsis—“I saw a fat man!”