“Oh, yes, I do. But I don’t feel quite up to meeting people just now; I’ll push on down town. I’m rather tired. Good-by.”
Kane held his hand between both his palms. “I wonder what the real reason is! Is it grudge, or pride, or youth?”
“Neither,” said Ray. “It’s—clothes. My boots are muddy, and I’ve got on my second-best trousers.”
“Ah, now you are frank with me, and you give me a real reason. Perhaps you are right. I dare say I should have thought so once.”
XVIII.
Ray did not go to deliver any of his letters that afternoon; he decided now that it would be out of taste to do so on Sunday, as he had already doubted that it would be, in the morning. He passed the afternoon in his room, trying from time to time to reduce the turmoil of his reveries to intelligible terms in verse, and in poetic prose. He did nothing with them; in the end, though, he was aware of a new ideal, and he resolved that if he could get his story back from Chapley & Co., he would rewrite the passages that characterized the heroine, and make it less like the every-day, simple prettiness of his first love. He had always known that this did not suit the character he had imagined; he now saw that it required a more complex and mystical charm. But he did not allow himself to formulate these volitions and perceptions, any more than his conviction that he had now a double reason for keeping away from Mr. Brandreth and from Miss Hughes. He spent the week in an ecstasy of forbearance. On Saturday afternoon he feigned the necessity of going to ask Mr. Brandreth how he thought a novel in verse, treating a strictly American subject in a fantastic way, would succeed. He really wished to learn something without seeming to wish it, about his manuscript, but he called so late in the afternoon that he found Mr. Brandreth putting his desk in order just before starting home. He professed a great pleasure at sight of Ray, and said he wished he would come part of the way home with him; he wanted to have a little talk.
As if the word home had roused the latent forces of hospitality in him, he added, “I want to have you up at my place, some day, as soon as we can get turned round. Mrs. Brandreth is doing first-rate, now; and that boy—well, sir, he’s a perfect Titan. I wish you could see him undressed. He’s just like the figure of the infant Hercules strangling the serpent when he grips the nurse’s finger. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I believe that fellow recognizes me, and distinguishes between me and his mother. I suppose it’s my hat—I come in with my hat on, you know, just to try him; and when he catches sight of that hat, you ought to see his arms go!”
The paternal rhapsodies continued a long time after they were in the street, and Ray got no chance to bring in either his real or pretended business. He listened with mechanical smiles and hollow laughter, alert at the same time for the slightest vantage which Mr. Brandreth should give him. But the publisher said of his own motion:
“Oh, by-the-way, you’ll be interested to know that our readers’ reports on your story are in.”