A LOST STORY
BY
FRANK NORRIS
Reprinted from _The Century Magazine_ of July, 1903 by permission
AT NINE o'clock that morning Rosella arrived in her little office on thethird floor of the great publishing house of Conant & Company, andputting up her veil without removing her hat, addressed herself to herday's work.
She went through her meager and unimportant mail, wrote a few replies,and then turned to the pile of volunteer manuscripts which it was herduty to read and report upon.
For Rosella was Conant's "reader," and so well was she acquainted withthe needs of the house, so thorough was she in her work, and so greatwas the reliance upon her judgment, that she was the only one employed.Manuscripts that she "passed up" went direct to Conant himself, whilethe great army of the "declined" had no second chance. For the"unavailables" her word was final.
From the first--which was when her initial literary venture, a littlebook of short tales of Sicily and the Sicilians, was published by thehouse--her relations with the Conants had been intimate. Conant believedin her, and for the sake of the time when her books could be consideredsafe investments, was willing to lose a few dollars during the time ofher apprenticeship. For the tales had enjoyed only a fleeting _succesd'estime_. Her style was, like her temperament, delicately constructedand of extreme refinement, not the style to appeal to the masses. It was"searched," a little _precieuse_, and the tales themselves werediaphanous enough, polished little _contes_, the points subtle, theaction turning upon minute psychological distinctions.
Yet she had worked desperately hard upon their composition. She was ofthose very few who sincerely cannot write unless the mood be propitious;and her state of mind, the condition of her emotions, was very apt toinfluence her work for good or ill, as the case might be.
But a _succes d'estime_ fills no purses, and favorable reviews in theliterary periodicals are not "negotiable paper." Rosella could not yetlive wholly by her pen, and thought herself fortunate when the houseoffered her the position of reader.
This arrival of hers was no doubt to be hastened, if not actuallyassured, by the publication of her first novel, "Patroclus," upon whichshe was at this time at work. The evening before, she had read the draftof the story to Trevor, and even now, as she cut the string of the firstmanuscript of the pile, she was thinking over what Trevor had said ofit, and smiling as she thought.
It was through Conant that Rosella had met the great novelist andcritic, and it was because of Conant that Trevor had read Rosella'sfirst little book. He had taken an interest at once, and had foundoccasion to say to her that she had it in her to make a niche forherself in American letters.
He was a man old enough to be her grandfather, and Rosella often came tosee him in his study, to advise with him as to doubtful points in herstories or as to ideas for those as yet unwritten. To her his opinionwas absolutely final. This old gentleman, this elderly man of letters,who had seen the rise and fall of a dozen schools, was above theinfluence of fads, and he whose books were among the classics evenbefore his death was infallible in his judgments of the work of theyounger writers. All the stages of their evolution were known tohim--all their mistakes, all their successes. He understood; and a storyby one of them, a poem, a novel, that bore the stamp of his approval,was "sterling." Work that he declared a failure was such in veryearnest, and might as well be consigned as speedily as possible to thegrate or the waste-basket.
When, therefore, he had permitted himself to be even enthusiastic over"Patroclus," Rosella had been elated beyond the power of expression, andhad returned home with blazing cheeks and shining eyes, to lie awakehalf the night thinking of her story, planning, perfecting, consideringand reconsidering.
Like her short stories, the tale was of extreme delicacy in bothsentiment and design. It was a little fanciful, a little elaborate, butof an ephemeral poetry. It was all "atmosphere," and its successdepended upon the minutest precision of phrasing and the nicest harmonybetween idea and word. There was much in mere effect of words; and moreimportant than mere plot was the feeling produced by the balancing ofphrases and the cadence of sentence and paragraph.
Only a young woman of Rosella's complexity, of her extremesensitiveness, could have conceived "Patroclus," nor could she herselfhope to complete it successfully at any other period of her life. Anyearlier she would have been too immature to adapt herself to itsdemands; any later she would have lost the spontaneity, the _jeunesse_,and the freshness which were to contribute to its greatest charm.
The tale itself was simple. Instead of a plot, a complication, it builtitself around a central idea, and it was the originality of this idea,this motif, that had impressed Trevor so strongly. Indeed, Rosella'sdraft could convey no more than that. Her treatment was all to follow.But here she was sure of herself. The style would come naturally as sheworked.
She was ambitious, and in her craving to succeed, to be recognized andaccepted, was all that passionate eagerness that only the artist knows.So far success had been denied her; but now at last she seemed to seelight. Her "Patroclus" would make her claims good. Everything dependedupon that.
She had thought over this whole situation while she removed thewrappings from the first manuscript of the pile upon her desk. Even thenher fingers itched for the pen, and the sentences and phrases of theopening defined themselves clearly in her mind. But that was not to bethe immediate work. The unlovely bread-and-butter business pressed uponher. With a long breath she put the vision from her and turned herattention to the task at hand.
After her custom, she went through the pile, glancing at the titles andfirst lines of each manuscript, and putting it aside in the desk cornerto be considered in detail later on.
She almost knew in advance that of the thirty-odd volunteers of thatday's batch not one would prove available. The manuscripts were taggedand numbered in the business office before they came to her, and thenumber of the first she picked up that morning was 1120, and this sincethe first of the year. Of the eleven hundred she had accepted onlythree. Of these three, two had failed entirely after publication; thethird had barely paid expenses. What a record! How hopeless it seemed!Yet the strugglers persisted. Did it not seem as if No. 1120, Mrs. AllenBowen of Bentonville, South Dakota--did it not seem as if she could knowthat the great American public has no interest in, no use for, "Thoughtson the Higher Life," a series of articles written for the countypaper--foolish little articles revamped from Ruskin and Matthew Arnold?
And 1121--what was this? The initial lines ran: "'Oh, damn everything!'exclaimed Percival Holcombe, as he dropped languidly into a deep-seatedleather chair by the club window which commanded a view of the noisystreet crowded with fashion and frivolity, wherein the afternoon's sun,freed from its enthralling mists, which all day long had jealouslyobscured his beams, was gloating o'er the panels of the carriages ofnoblemen who were returning from race-track and park, and the towhead ofthe little sweeper who plied his humble trade which earned his scantysupper that he ate miles away from that gay quarter wherein PercivalHolcombe, who----" Rosella paused for sheer breath. This sort did notneed to be read. It was declined already. She picked up the next. It wasin an underwear-box of green pasteboard.
"The staid old town of Salem," it read, "was all astir one bright andsunny morning in the year 1604." Rosella groaned. "Another!" she said."Now," she continued, speaking to herself and shutting her eyes--"nowabout the next page the 'portly burgess' will address the heroine as'Mistress,' and will say, 'An' whither away so early?'" She turned overto verify. She was wrong. The portly burgess had said: "Good morrow,Mistress Priscilla. An' where away so gaily bedizened?" She sighed asshe put the manuscript away. "Why, and, oh, why _will_ they do it!" shemurmured.
The next one, 1123, was a story "Compiled from the Memoirs of One PerkinAlthorpe, Esq., Sometime Field-Coronet in His Majesty's Troop of Horse,"and was sown thick with objurgation--"Ods-wounds!" "Body o' me!" "Amurrain on thee!" "By my halidom!" and all the rest of the sweep
ings andtailings of Scott and the third-rate romanticists.
"Declined," said Rosella, firmly, tossing it aside. She turned to 1124:
"About three o'clock of a roseate day in early spring two fashionablesof the softer sex, elegantly arrayed, might have been observedsauntering languidly down Fifth Avenue.
"'Are you going to Mrs. Van Billion's musicale tonight?' inquired theolder of the two, a tall and striking demi-brunette, turning to hercompanion.
"'No, indeed,' replied the person thus addressed, a blonde of exquisitecoloring. 'No, indeed. The only music one hears there is the chink ofsilver dollars. Ha! ha! ha! ha!'"
Rosella winced as if in actual physical anguish. "And the author callsit a 'social satire'!" she exclaimed. "How can she! How can she!"
She turned to the next. It was written in script that was a model ofneatness, margined, correctly punctuated, and addressed, "HaroldVickers," with the town and State. Its title was "The Last Dryad," andthe poetry of the phrase stuck in her mind. She read the first lines,then the first page, then two.
"Come," said Rosella, "there is something in this." At once she was in alittle valley in Boeotia in the Arcadian day. It was evening. There wasno wind. Somewhere a temple, opalescent in the sunset, suggested ratherthan defined itself. A landscape developed such as Turner in a quietmood might have evolved, and with it a feeling of fantasy, ofremoteness, of pure, true classicism. A note of pipes was in the air,sheep bleated, and Daphne, knee-deep in the grass, surging an answer tothe pipes, went down to meet her shepherd.
Rosella breathed a great sigh of relief. Here at last was apossibility--a new writer with a new, sane view of his world and hiswork. A new poet, in fine. She consulted the name and addressgiven--Harold Vickers, Ash Fork, Arizona. There was something in thatHarold; perhaps education and good people. But the Vickers told hernothing. And where was Ash Fork, Arizona; and why and how had "The LastDryad" been written there, of all places the green world round? How camethe inspiration for that classic _paysage_, such as Ingres would haveloved, from the sage-brush, and cactus? "Well," she told herself, "Moorewrote 'Lalla Rookh' in a back room in London, among the chimney-pots andsoot. Maybe the proportion is inverse. But, Mr. Harold Vickers of AshFork, Arizona, your little book is, to say the least, well worth itsink."
She went through the other manuscripts as quickly as was consistent withfairness, and declined them all. Then settling herself comfortably inher chair, she plunged, with the delight of an explorer venturing uponnew ground, into the pages of "The Last Dryad."
* * * * *
Four hours later she came, as it were, to herself, to find that she satlax in her place, with open, upturned palms, and eyes vacantly fixedupon the opposite wall. "The Last Dryad," read to the final word, wastumbled in a heap upon the floor. It was past her luncheon hour. Hercheeks flamed; her hands were cold and moist; and her heart beat thickand slow, clogged, as it were, by its own heaviness.
But the lapse of time was naught to her, nor the fever that throbbed inher head. Her world, like a temple of glass, had come down dashing abouther. The future, which had beckoned her onward,--a fairy in the pathwherein her feet were set,--was gone, and at the goal of her ambitionand striving she saw suddenly a stranger stand, plucking down the goldenapples that she so long and passionately had desired.
For "The Last Dryad" was her own, her very, very own and cherished"Patroclus."
That the other author had taken the story from a different view-point,that his treatment varied, that the approach was his own, that thewording was his own, produced not the least change upon the finalresult. The idea, the motif, was identical in each; identical in everyparticular, identical in effect, in suggestion. The two tales were one.That was the fact, the unshakable fact, the block of granite that amalicious fortune had flung athwart her little pavilion of glass.
At first she jumped to the conclusion of chicanery. At first thereseemed no other explanation. "He stole it," she cried, rousingvehemently from her inertia--"mine--mine. He stole my story."
But common sense prevailed in the end. No, there was no possible chancefor theft. She had not spoken of "Patroclus" to any one but Trevor. Hermanuscript draft had not once left her hands. No; it was a coincidence,nothing more--one of those fateful coincidences with which thescientific and literary worlds are crowded. And he, this unknownVickers, this haphazard genius of Ash Fork, Arizona, had the priorclaim. Her "Patroclus" must remain unwritten. The sob caught andclutched at her throat at last.
"Oh," she cried in a half-whisper--"oh, my chance, my hopes, my foolishlittle hopes! And now _this_! To have it all come to nothing--when I wasso proud, so buoyant--and Mr. Trevor and all! Oh, could anything be morecruel!"
And then, of all moments, _ex machina_, Harold Vickers's card was handedin.
She stared at it an instant, through tears, amazed and incredulous.Surely some one was playing a monstrous joke upon her today. Soon shewould come upon the strings and false bottoms and wigs and masks of thegame. But the office boy's contemplation of her distress was real.Something must be done. The whole machine of things could notindefinitely hang thus suspended, inert, waiting her pleasure.
"Yes," she exclaimed all at once. "Very well; show him in;" and she hadno more than gathered up the manuscript of "The Last Dryad" from thefloor when its author entered the room.
He was very young,--certainly not more than twenty-three,--tall, ratherpoorly dressed, an invalid, beyond doubt, and the cough and the flush onthe high cheek-bone spelled the name of the disease. The pepper-and-saltsuit, the shoe-string cravat, and the broad felt hat were franklyArizona. And he was diffident, constrained, sitting uncomfortably on thechair as a mark of respect, smiling continually, and, as he talked,throwing in her name at almost every phrase:
"No, Miss. Beltis; yes, Miss. Beltis; quite right, Miss. Beltis."
His embarrassment helped her to her own composure, and by the time shecame to question him as to his book and the reasons that brought himfrom Ash Fork to New York, she had herself in hand.
"I have received an unimportant government appointment in the FisheriesDepartment," he explained, "and as I was in New York for the week Ithought I might--not that I wished to seem to hurry you, Miss.Beltis--but I thought I might ask if you had come to--to my little bookyet."
In five minutes of time Rosella knew just where Harold Vickers was to beplaced, to what type he belonged. He was the young man of great talentwho, so far from being discovered by the outside world, had not evendiscovered himself. He would be in two minds as yet about his calling inlife, whether it was to be the hatching of fish or the writing of "LastDryads." No one had yet taken him in hand, had so much as spoken a wordto him. If she told him now that his book was a ridiculous failure, hewould no doubt say--and believe--that she was quite right, that he hadfelt as much himself. If she told him his book was a little masterpiece,he would be just as certain to tell himself, and with equal sincerity,that he had known it from the first.
He had offered his manuscript nowhere else as yet. He was as new as anovernight daisy, and as destructible in Rosella's hands.
"Yes," she said at length, "I have read your manuscript." She paused amoment, then: "But I am not quite ready to pass upon it yet."
He was voluble in his protestations.
"Oh, that is all right," she interrupted. "I can come to the secondreading in a day or two. I could send you word by the end of the week."
"Thank you, Miss. Beltis." He paused awkwardly, smiling in deprecatoryfashion. "Do you--from what you have seen of it--read of it--do you--howdoes it strike you? As good enough to publish--or fit for thewaste-basket?"
Ah, why had this situation leaped upon her thus unawares, and allunprepared! Why had she not been allowed time, opportunity, to fortifyherself!
What she said now would mean so much. Best err, then, on the safe side;and which side was that? Her words seemed to come of themselves, and shealmost physically felt herself withdraw from the responsibility of whatthis
other material Rosella Beltis was saying.
"I don't know," said the other Rosella. "I should not care to say--sosoon. You see--there are so many manuscripts. I generally trust to thefirst impression on the second reading." She did not even hear hisanswer, but she said, when he had done speaking, that even in case of anunfavorable report there were, of course, other publishers.
But he answered that the judgment of such a house as the Conants wouldsuffice for him. Somehow he could not peddle his story about New York.If the Conants would not take his work, nobody would.
And that was the last remark of importance he made. During the fewremaining moments of his visit they spoke of unessentials, and beforeshe was aware, he had gone away, leaving with her a memorandum of hisaddress at the time.
* * * * *
She did not sleep that night. When she left the office she brought "TheLast Dryad" home with her, and till far into the night she read it andre-read it, comparing it and contrasting it with "Patroclus," searchingdiligently if perhaps there were not some minute loophole of evasion,some devious passage through which she might escape. But amid theshattered panes of her glass pavilion the block of stone persisted,inert, immovable. The stone could not be raised, the little edificecould not be rebuilt.
Then at last, inevitably, the temptation came--came and grew and shutabout her and gripped her close. She began to temporize, to advanceexcuses. Was not her story the better one? Granted that the idea was thesame, was not the treatment, the presentation, more effective? Shouldnot the fittest survive? Was it not right that the public should havethe better version? Suppose "Patroclus" had been written by a thirdperson, and she had been called upon to choose between it and "The LastDryad," would she not have taken "Patroclus" and rejected the other? Ah,but "Patroclus" was not yet written! Well, that was true. But the draftof it was; the idea of it had been conceived eight months ago. Perhapsshe had thought of her story before Vickers had thought of his. Perhaps?No; it was very probable; there was no doubt of it, in fact. That wasthe important thing: the conception of the idea, not the execution. Andif this was true, her claim was prior.
But what would Conant say of such reasoning, and Trevor--would theyapprove? Would they agree?
"Yes, they would," she cried the instant the thought occurred to her."Yes, they would, they would, they would; I know they would. I am sureof it; sure of it."
But she knew they would not. The idea of right persisted and persisted.Rosella was on the rack, and slowly, inevitably, resistlessly thetemptation grew and gathered, and snared her feet and her hands, and,fold on fold, lapped around her like a veil.
A great and feminine desire to shift the responsibility began to possessher mind.
"I cannot help it," she cried. "I am not to blame. It is all very wellto preach, but how would--any one do in my case? It is not my fault."
And all at once, without knowing how or why, she found that she hadwritten, sealed, stamped, and addressed a note to Harold Vickersdeclining his story.
But this was a long way from actually rejecting "The LastDryad"--rejecting it in favor of "Patroclus." She had only written thenote, so she told herself, just to see how the words would look. It wasmerely an impulse; would come to nothing, of course. Let us put itaside, that note, and seriously consider this trying situation.
Somehow it seemed less trying now; somehow the fact of her distressseemed less poignant. There was a way out of it--stop. No; do not lookat the note there on the table. There was a way out, no doubt, but notthat one; no, of course not that one. Rosella laughed a little. Howeasily some one else, less scrupulous, would solve this problem! Well,she could solve it, too, and keep her scruples as well; but not tonight.Now she was worn out. Tomorrow it would look different to her.
She went to bed and tossed wide-eyed and wakeful till morning, thenrose, and after breakfast prepared to go to the office as usual. Themanuscript of "The Last Dryad" lay on her table, and while she waswrapping it up her eye fell upon the note to Harold Vickers.
"Why," she murmured, with a little grimace of astonishment--"why, how isthis? I thought I burned that last night. How _could_ I haveforgotten!"
She could have burned it then. The fire was crackling in the grate; shehad but to toss it in. But she preferred to delay.
"I will drop it in some ash-can or down some sewer on the way to theoffice," she said to herself. She slipped it into her muff and hurriedaway. But on the way to the cable-car no ash-can presented itself. True,she discovered the opening of a sewer on the corner where she took hercar. But a milkman and a police officer stood near at hand inconversation, occasionally glancing at her, and no doubt they would havethought it strange to see this well-dressed young woman furtivelydropping a sealed letter into a sewer-vent.
She held it awkwardly in her hand all of her way down-town, and stillcarried it there when she had descended from her car and took her way upthe cross-street toward Conant's.
She suddenly remembered that she had other letters to mail that morning.For two days the weekly epistles that she wrote home to her mother andyounger sister had been overlooked in her pocket. She found a mail-boxon the corner by the Conant building and crossed over to it, holding hermother's and sister's letters in one hand and the note to Vickers in theother.
Carefully scanning the addresses, to make sure she did not confuse theletters, she dropped in her home correspondence, then stood there amoment irresolute.
Irresolute as to what, she could not say. Her decision had been taken inthe matter of "The Last Dryad." She would accept it, as it deserved.Whether she was still to write "Patroclus" was a matter to beconsidered later. Well, she was glad she had settled it all. If she hadnot come to this conclusion she might have been, at that very instant,dropping the letter to Harold Vickers into the box. She would havestood, thus, facing the box, have raised the cast-iron flap,--this withone hand,--and with the other have thrust the note into the slide--thus.
Her fingers closed hard upon the letter at the very last instant--ah,not too late. But suppose she had, but for one second, opened her thumband forefinger and--what? What would come of it?
And there, with the letter yet on the edge of the drop she called upagain the entire situation, the identity of the stories, thejeopardizing--no, the wrecking--of her future career by thischance-thrown barrier in the way. Why hesitate, why procrastinate? Herthoughts came to her in a whirl. If she acted quickly now,--took theleap with shut eyes, reckless of result,--she could truly be sorry then,truly acknowledge what was right, believe that Vickers had the priorclaim without the hard necessity of acting up to her convictions. Atleast, this harrowing indecision would be over with.
"Indecision?" What was this she was saying? Had she not this moment toldherself that she was resolved--resolved to accept "The Last Dryad"?Resolved to accept it? Was that true? Had she done so? Had she not madeup her mind long ago to decline it--decline it with full knowledge thatits author would destroy it once the manuscript should be returned?
These thoughts had whisked through her mind with immeasurable rapidity.The letter still rested half in, half out of the drop. She still held itthere.
By now Rosella knew if she let it fall she would do so deliberately,with full knowledge of what she was about. She could not afterwardexcuse herself by saying that she had been confused, excited, actingupon an unreasoned impulse. No; it would be deliberate, deliberate,deliberate. She would have to live up to that decision, whatever it was,for many months to come, perhaps for years. Perhaps,--who couldsay?--perhaps it might affect her character permanently. In a crisislittle forces are important, disproportionately so. And then it was, andthus it was, that Rosella took her resolve. She raised the iron flaponce more, and saying aloud and with a ring of defiance in her voice:"Deliberately, deliberately; I don't care," loosed her hold upon theletter. She heard it fall with a soft rustling impact upon theaccumulated mail-matter in the bottom of the box.
A week later she received her letter back with a stamped legend
acrossits face informing her with dreadful terseness that the party to whomthe letter was addressed was deceased. She divined a blunder, but forall that, and with conflicting emotions, sought confirmation in thedaily press. There, at the very end of the column, stood the notice:
VICKERS. At New York, on Sunday, November 12, Harold Anderson Vickers, in the twenty-third year of his age. Arizona papers please copy. Notice of funeral hereafter.
Three days later she began to write "Patroclus."
* * * * *
Rosella stood upon the door-step of Trevor's house, closing her umbrellaand shaking the water from the folds of her mackintosh. It was betweeneight and nine in the evening, and since morning a fine rain had fallensteadily. But no stress of weather could have kept Rosella at home thatevening. A week previous she had sent to Trevor the type-written copy ofthe completed "Patroclus," and tonight she was to call for themanuscript and listen to his suggestions and advice.
She had triumphed in the end--triumphed over what, she had not alwayscared to inquire. But once the pen in her hand, once "Patroclus" begun,and the absorption of her mind, her imagination, her every faculty, inthe composition of the story, had not permitted her to think of or toremember anything else.
And she saw that her work was good. She had tested it by every method,held it up to her judgment in all positions and from all sides, and inher mind, so far as she could see, and she was a harsh critic for herown work, it stood the tests. Not the least of her joys was the pleasurethat she knew Trevor would take in her success. She could foresee justthe expression of his face when he would speak, could forecast just thetones of the voice, the twinkle of the kindly eyes behind the glasses.
When she entered the study, she found Trevor himself, as she hadexpected, waiting for her in slippers and worn velvet jacket, pipe inhand, and silk skullcap awry upon the silver-white hair. He extended aninky hand, and still holding it and talking, led her to an easy-chairnear the hearth.
Even through the perturbation of her mind Rosella could not butwonder--for the hundredth time--at the apparent discrepancy between thegreat novelist and the nature of his books. These latter were, each andall of them, wonders of artistic composition, compared with the hordesof latter-day pictures. They were the aristocrats of their kind, full ofreserved force, unimpeachable in dignity, stately even, at timesveritably austere.
And Trevor himself was a short, rotund man, rubicund as to face,bourgeois as to clothes and surroundings (the bisque statuette of afisher-boy obtruded the vulgarity of its gilding and tinting from themantelpiece), jovial in manner, indulging even in slang. One mighteasily have set him down as a retired groceryman--wholesale perhaps, butnone the less a groceryman. Yet touch him upon the subject of hisprofession, and the bonhomie lapsed away from him at once. Then hebecame serious. Literature was not a thing to be trifled with.
Thus it was tonight. For five minutes Trevor filled the room with theroaring of his own laughter and the echoes of his own vociferous voice.He was telling a story--a funny story, about what Rosella, with herthoughts on "Patroclus," could not for the life of her have said, andshe must needs listen in patience and with perfunctory merriment whilethe narrative was conducted to its close with all the accompaniment ofstamped feet and slapped knees.
"'Why, becoth, mithtah,' said that nigger. 'Dat dawg ain' good fo'nothin' ailse; so I jes rickon he 'th boun' to be a coon dawg;'" and theauthor of "Snow in April" pounded the arm of his chair and roared tillthe gas-fixtures vibrated.
Then at last, taking advantage of a lull in the talk, Rosella, unableto contain her patience longer, found breath to remark:
"And 'Patroclus'--my--my little book?"
"Ah--hum, yes. 'Patroclus,' your story. I've read it."
At once another man was before her, or rather the writer--thenovelist--_in_ the man. Something of the dignity of his literary styleimmediately seemed to invest him with a new character. He fell quiet,grave, not a little abstracted, and Rosella felt her heart sink. Herlittle book (never had it seemed so insignificant, so presumptuous asnow) had been on trial before a relentless tribunal, had indeedundergone the ordeal of fire. But the verdict, the verdict! Quietly, butwith cold hands clasped tight together, she listened while the greatestnovelist of America passed judgment upon her effort.
"Yes; I've read it," continued Trevor. "Read it carefully--carefully.You have worked hard upon it. I can see that. You have put your wholesoul into it, put all of yourself into it. The narrative is all there,and I have nothing but good words to say to you about the construction,the mere mechanics of it. But----"
Would he never go on? What was this? What did that "But" mean? What elsebut disaster could it mean? Rosella shut her teeth.
"But, to speak frankly, my dear girl, there is something lacking. Oh,the idea, the motif--that----" he held up a hand. "That is as intact aswhen you read me the draft. The central theme, the approach, thegrouping of the characters, the dialogue--all good--all good. The thingthat is lacking I find very hard to define. But the _mood_ of thestory, shall we say?--the mood of the story is----" he stopped, frowningin perplexity, hesitating. The great master of words for once foundhimself at a loss for expression. "The mood is somehow truculent, whenit should be as suave, as quiet, as the very river you describe. Don'tyou see? Can't you understand what I mean? In this 'Patroclus' theatmosphere, the little, delicate, subtle sentiment, iseverything--everything. What was the mere story? Nothing without theproper treatment. And it was just in this fine, intimate relationshipbetween theme and treatment that the success of the book was to belooked for. I thought I could be sure of you there. I thought that youof all people could work out that motif adequately. But"--he waved ahand over the manuscript that lay at her elbow--"this--it is not thething. This is a poor criticism, you will say, merely a marshaling ofempty phrases, abstractions. Well, that may be; I repeat, it is veryhard for me to define just what there is of failure in your 'Patroclus.'But it is empty, dry, hard, barren. Am I cruel to speak so frankly? If Iwere less frank, my dear girl, I would be less just, less kind. You havetold merely the story, have narrated episodes in their sequence of time,and where the episodes have stopped there you have ended the book. Thewhole animus that should have put the life into it is gone, or, if it isnot gone, it is so perverted that it is incorrigible. To _my_ mind thebook is a failure."
Rosella did not answer when Trevor ceased speaking, and there was a longsilence. Trevor looked at her anxiously. He had hated to hurt her.Rosella gazed vaguely at the fire. Then at last the tears filled hereyes.
"I am sorry, very, very sorry," said Trevor, kindly. "But to have toldyou anything but the truth would have done you a wrong--and, then, noearnest work is altogether wasted. Even though 'Patroclus' is--not whatwe expected of it, your effort over it will help you in something else.You did work hard at it. I saw that. You must have put your whole soulinto it."
"That," said Rosella, speaking half to herself--"that was just thetrouble."
But Trevor did not understand.