“That’s her way,” said Mr. Brandreth, and he added briskly, “Well, now, let’s come down to business. How do you want to publish? Want to make your own plates?”
“No,” Ray faltered; “I can’t afford to do that; I had one such offer”—
“I supposed you wouldn’t,” Mr. Brandreth cut in, “but I thought I’d ask. Well, then, we’ll make the plates ourselves, and we’ll pay you ten per cent. on the retail price of the book. That is the classic arrangement with authors, and I think it’s fair.” When he said this he swallowed, as if there were something in his throat, and added, “Up to a certain point. And as we take all the risk, I think we ought to have—You see, on one side it’s a perfect lottery, and on the other side it’s a dead certainty. You can’t count on the public, but you can count on the landlord, the salesman, the bookkeeper, the printer, and the paper-maker. We’re at all the expense—rent, clerk-hire, plates, printing, binding, and advertising, and the author takes no risk whatever.”
It occurred to Ray afterwards that an author took the risk of losing his labor if his book failed; but the public estimates the artist’s time at the same pecuniary value as the sitting hen’s, and the artist insensibly accepts the estimate. Ray did not think of his point in season to urge it, but it would hardly have availed if he had. He was tremulously eager to close with Mr. Brandreth on any terms, and after they had agreed, he was afraid he had taken advantage of him.
When the thing was done it was like everything else. He had dwelt so long and intensely upon it in a thousand reveries that he had perhaps exhausted his possibilities of emotion concerning it. At any rate he found himself curiously cold; he wrote to his father about it, and he wrote to Sanderson, who would be sure to make a paragraph for the Echo, and unless Hanks Brothers killed his paragraph, would electrify Midland with the news. Ray forecast the matter and the manner of the paragraph, but it did not excite him.
“What is the trouble with me?” he asked Kane, whom he hastened to tell his news. “I ought to be in a transport; I’m not in anything of the kind.”
“Ah! That is very interesting. No doubt you’ll come to it. I had a friend once who was accepted in marriage by the object of his affections. His first state was apathy, mixed, as nearly as I could understand, with dismay. He became more enthusiastic later on, and lived ever after in the belief that he was one of the most fortunate of men. But I think we are the victims of conventional acceptations in regard to most of the great affairs of life. We are taught that we shall feel so and so about such and such things: about success in love or in literature; about the birth of our first-born; about death. But probably no man feels as he expected to feel about these things. He finds them of exactly the same quality as all other experiences; there may be a little more or a little less about them, but there isn’t any essential difference. Perhaps when we come to die ourselves, it will be as simply and naturally as—as”—
“As having a book accepted by a publisher,” Ray suggested.
“Exactly!” said Kane, and he breathed out his deep, soft laugh.
“Well, you needn’t go on. I’m sufficiently accounted for.” Ray rose, and Kane asked him what his hurry was, and where he was going.