Chapter V: Part TWO: The American Madonna (1)

XI

NEW YORK

If he had been able to earn his living in any conventional and accepted way, he would not have been on his way to join the S.S. _Saurian_ as she lay off the landing-stage at Southampton on that bright September morning. The poor must needs learn a trade, because a trade is necessary to mere existence; but it is the tragedy of the rich and the semi-rich that, when once deprived of the artificial security of riches, they are helpless.

Arthur had plenty of time to do battle with this afflicting thought as he travelled down to Southampton. It accompanied him, like a voice of irony, in the rushing wheels; flashed upon him in the sentinel telegraph posts, each bearing aloft its spark of silent fire; saluted him from a hundred fields where men stood bare-armed beside the loaded wains; mocked him in casual glimpses of firm faces behind the glass of signal-boxes, in hurrying porters at the points of stoppage, in groups of labourers leaning lightly on spade or mattock, as the train thundered past. In all these faces, common as they were, there was a look of proud efficiency. In every sight and sound was the vindication of human toil. These men, each in his several way, had solved the problem of life. Each had learned to do something which the world wanted done. They did the work required of them, undistracted by problems and philosophies; asked no questions concerning the structure of society or the nature of life; were content to add their stone to the cairn, to pass on and be forgotten, and to earn the final simple elegy, "home have gone and ta'en their wages."

But Arthur--what did he know of this primeval life of man, which had gone on from the dawn of the world, unchanged by change of dynasties, by the readjustment of nations, by the birth and death of a hundred intricate philosophies, literatures, reforms, social experiments, social reconstructions? He knew less than the humblest child who followed the reapers in the field, or began the perilous process of existence by earning casual pence in the mine or factory. Like so many youths in an age when all forms of hand-labour have lost their dignity, he had learned a hundred things which lent a false glamour to existence, but not one which supplied its vital needs. He had accumulated accomplishments, but had not developed efficiencies, as though one should adorn and decorate a machine in which the works were lacking.

"Let me reckon up my capital," he thought as the train rushed on; "let me ascertain my authentic stock-in-trade. I have some knowledge of Greek literature and Roman history, but it is probable that in all this train-load of human creatures there are not half a dozen who would attach the least value to my knowledge. I can decipher old French chronicles with fair success; I know enough of music to understand the theory of counterpoint, and enough of poetry to construct a decent sonnet; and, so far as I can see, these are not commodities which possess any marketable value. I have thirty pounds given me by my mother; but if my life depended upon my earning thirty pence, I know no possible method by which I might wrest the most wretched pittance from the world's closed fist. I am, in fact, an incompetent, but through no fault of my own. It seems that I have been elaborately trained to do a great number of things which no one wants done, but not one of the things for which the world makes eager compensation. What were mere pastime to the savage is to me an inaccessible display of effort; left alone with the whole open world for my kingdom, it is doubtful if I could build a house, grow a potato, bake a loaf, or secure the barest means of life. Such is my deplorable condition that it is possible--no, entirely certain, that the poorest emigrant in this rushing freight of men and women would scruple to change places with me. That's a pretty situation for a gentleman of England and an Oxford graduate, isn't it?"

He smiled mirthlessly at the thought. Yet while it humiliated him, youth asserted its right sufficiently to extract from it a certain flavour of exhilaration. He was at all events coming to grips with the reality of living. He had been like a boy swimming upon bladders; the bladders were now removed, and a potent and tremendous sea throbbed beneath him. Since he could depend no more on artificial aids to life, it followed that life must needs develop its own latent forces. There surely must be such forces in himself, an elemental manhood which must justify itself. There recurred to him a saying of Hilary Vickars. They had been discussing one night the infinite and elusive question of wherein lay the wisdom of life, when Vickars had abruptly said, "Practice is the only teacher. You learn to walk by walking, to swim by swimming, to live by living. The child has no theory about walking: he simply walks, at the price of a thousand tears and bruises. In the same way we must make the experiment of living in order to learn how to live. It is the same with religion. We make the experiment of God before we can find God. The particular folly of men to-day is that they think wisdom comes by talking about wisdom. One honest attempt to do something, however blunderingly, is worth a lifetime of discussion about how it should be done."

"Yet Browning held that the great thing planned was better than the little thing achieved," he had responded.

"Browning also was a talker rather than a doer," Vickars had replied. "He misleads men by the very robustness of his talk into the notion that great dreams can take the place of great actions. Don't let him mislead you. Remember what I say, that the great business of life is to live, not to criticise life."

He remembered the words now, and they acquired new significance as he studied the faces of his comrades. There were four men in the carriage with him, one of them middle-aged, the others mere youths. The middle-aged man had a good, plain, country face, with a fringe of gray whisker; two of the youths were clearly country-bred, the third had the alert look and pallor of the city. The middle-aged man sat in stolid silence, with his big knotted hands folded on his knees; the two country youths watched the flying fields with eagerness; the city youth had produced a zither, on which he was strumming hymn-tunes. "Safe in the arms of Jesus," was the tune he strummed.

"Thank you, sir," said the middle-aged man. "It kind of cheers one up a bit to hear that."

"It's the only tune I really know," said the youth apologetically. "You see, I'm only a beginner."

"My little girl used to sing it. Learned it in a Sunday school at Newcastle. She's dead now."

The simple words had the effect of dissolving the reticence of these chance travellers. They began to talk, and very soon each was relating his history. The two country youths had the least to say. They had heard there was work in America with good pay; in that statement their entire history was comprehended. They had not the least idea of the country they were going to; its very geography was as much a mystery to them as the binomial theorem; they were, in fact, staking everything upon a rumour, and Arthur found their very ignorance at once deplorable and wonderful as an expression of the hopeful courage of the human heart. The London youth was more garrulous, and slightly better informed. It seemed he had a relative who had promised him a place in a small business which he managed near Philadelphia.

"I am a clerk, you know. A man who is a good clerk can always get on in any commercial centre. Except in London. There everything's congested, too many people and not enough work to go round. "England," he pronounced oracularly, "is done. Her day's over."

It seemed the younger men endorsed this verdict with surprising unanimity. Each was a fugitive from an unequal battle. Men could not live on the land, because of high rents and exorbitant taxation; neither could they live in cities, because over-population and excessive competition had reduced wages to starvation point; "England was all very well for the rich--let them live in it as they could--but a poor man couldn't, and that was about the size of it."

"But surely you two could live well enough," said Arthur to the country youths.

"Oh, live--yes," said one; "but what is there at the end of it all? Nothing but the workhouse."

"Yes, that's it," said the middle-aged man slowly, "but there's workhouses in the States, too. Don't you be deceiving of yourselves. England ain't no worse than other places."

"And why are you leaving it then, I'd like to know?" said the London youth.

"Because I've had a trouble, young man."

Arthur's heart warmed toward this unwilling exile. The London youth, with his glib denunciation of England, disgusted him; the two country youths could by no stretch of charity be accounted interesting; but this grave, silent man who had "had a trouble" made an instant appeal to his sympathy. He began to talk with him, and little by little drew his history from him. It seemed his name was Vyse; he was a riveter by trade, had worked in the great shipyards of Clydebank, Newcastle, and Belfast, earning excellent wages, and had acquitted himself with industry and honour. Here was a man who had done something tangible and something that endured. Doubtless at that moment the work of his hands was distributed throughout the world; again and again he had stood silent as the vast hull upon which he had toiled trembled on the slips, took the water, and presently disappeared upon the plains of ocean, there to encounter the strangest diversities of fate, to be buffeted by the vast seas of the North Atlantic or the Horn, to be washed with phosphorescent ripples in the heart of the Pacific or among the coral islands of the South Seas, to fight the ice-floes of the Arctic, or sleep upon the waters of the Amazon. Here, thought Arthur, was the very poetry of labour; these disfigured hands held the threads that bound the world together, and round this plain man lay an horizon as wide as the farthest seas. Unconsciously the man's trade had imparted certain elements of largeness to his mind. He spoke of himself and his prospects with a certain plain dignity and confidence. He knew his value to the world; east or west, he was a needed man, one for whom the gate of labour stood wide open.

"I'll find work, never fear," he said. "I'm not like these boys," he added, with a glance at the two stolid country youths and the London clerk, who still strummed his one tune upon the zither. "They think they'll find life easier in America, and that's all they go for. I would think shame upon myself to emigrate upon such a hope as that. I don't hold with folk as run down England. It's my belief that them as runs down their own country won't be of much good in any other country. I tell you I'm sorry enough to leave England, and I wouldn't do it, except that I have a trouble."

Presently it came out what his trouble was. His wife was dead, and his only son had taken to evil ways. The man could have borne the loneliness of loss, but when the boy robbed and insulted him, proving finally intractable, he made up his mind to start life afresh in a new land where his disgrace could not follow him.

"There's years of work in me yet," he said. "But I can't work properly without a peaceful mind. And there's another thing, I've got to pay back what Charlie took from other folk. I couldn't lift my head up if I didn't. That's right, isn't it, sir?"

"Mr. Vyse," said Arthur, "I wish all of us could show as clean a bill of health as you."

The train was running into Southampton. Beside the landing-stage lay the great ship, which was to receive within a few minutes so many histories and destinies. The steerage was already packed with emigrants, many of them Italians, distinguishable by their gay-coloured clothing. Arthur found, to his delight, that Vyse was billeted with him in a four-berth cabin; the two other tenants were an old horse-dealer from the Western States, and a clergyman's son, going out upon a remittance. The cabin was deep down in the bowels of the ship, dark and airless. He hastened from it to the deck, and found himself in the midst of many farewell groups. Among them was the clergyman's son, who stood superciliously smoking a cigar, with his face averted from his father, who pressed upon him final kindnesses and counsels. "All right, father. It's time for you to go, you know," he said sullenly. "May God bless you, my boy!" said the old man. "Oh, I daresay," said the boy indifferently; and it was so they parted. Some one began to sing "Home, Sweet Home," a singularly inappropriate song in such an hour. A woman shrieking for her husband and her two children was put ashore; it seemed the baby in her arms was afflicted with sarcoma, and was expelled the ship. The brown water showed a sudden strake of white; a soft pulse throbbed somewhere beneath the decks; the screw had made the first of those countless revolutions that would not cease for three thousand miles; and the great vessel glided out upon the long path toward the setting sun.

There are few schools in the world where character can be studied at closer quarters, and certain lessons of life learned more rapidly, than on ship-board. The mere contiguity of a great variety of human creatures is itself a lesson in the real values of life. It was, for instance, an admirable incentive to self-reliance for Arthur to find himself for the first time in a position where he was despised. This incentive was administered daily by groups of gentlemen in ulsters and ladies in elaborate travelling-costumes, who gathered at the rail of the deck above like spectators in a gallery, and gazed down with evident commiseration, and sometimes with sarcastic comment, on the second class passengers. Occasionally these groups would leave their lofty gallery and make excursions through the inferior quarters, with the dainty airs of personally-conducted parties investigating slums, commenting openly as they went upon the manners of the lower deck in a spirit of condescending and cheerful vulgarity. The London clerk, with his eternal zither, was much remarked, and appeared proud of the attention he attracted. On the other hand, men like Vyse received these visits in stolid silence, not wholly free from resentment and contempt. "That's what money does," he said bitterly one day, when a group of these excursionists had retired; and Arthur, reflecting on the circumstance, came to see that the old workman was right in his diagnosis, and that it was a diagnosis shameful to human nature. For it was clear that these people owed their eminence neither to manners nor accomplishments; in solid worth and dignity of character Vyse would have been judged their superior in any equitable court; and, taken man for man, it was merely the better coat and not the better breeding that distinguished the upper from the lower deck.

When it came to kindness, which is the flower of all gentility, the virtues of the lower deck were even more strikingly apparent. On the fourth day out stormy weather was encountered; black, foamless seas rolled in perpetual assault from the north-west; there was an hour when the great ship made but five miles; word went round that the lifeboats were cleared and victualled; and the constant noise of hammers audible in the pauses of the tempest was significant of some damage in the iron walls that lay between them and death. It was then that, amid fear and dreadful discomfort, the virtues of the lower deck displayed themselves. Vyse nursed a sick child with the tenderness of a woman; the cattle-dealer spent the day in telling stories, very far from decorous, it must be admitted, to a group of half-frightened lads, who forgot their fears in their laughter; even the London clerk shone conspicuous with his zither and his eternal "Safe in the arms of Jesus." In the dark and narrow alley-ways, pounded by the threshing seas, whose fearful detonations seemed to fill the air with thunder, the clerk found his mission, and trembling voices sang with pathetic desire of conviction the words that express a faith which lifts the soul beyond the terrors of destruction.

"That is what money does," Vyse had said, and the reflection was inevitable that it did very little after all to benefit character, and not a little to emasculate or degrade it. The people with whom Arthur travelled had no monopoly of virtue, as he was bound to admit; the London clerk in his ordinary mood was a creature at once slight and vain, the horse-dealer was coarse; and so he might have gone through the whole list of his acquaintances, remarking plentiful defect in each. But the qualities were more obvious than the defects. There was a general spirit of helpfulness and kindness; many had grievous accusations, only too authentic, to make against the land from which they fled, but these accusations were rarely made in a spirit of bitterness or envy; all had the cardinal grace of courage, and were willing to believe that at the end of a long road of failure and defeat victory awaited them. It was this unquenchable buoyancy of hope in the crowd of fugitives from an unequal battle which struck Arthur as entirely wonderful and, indeed, heroic. There was not one of them unacquainted with failure in some extreme form; not one who had not heard the bugles of retreat on some disastrous field; yet each, after a brief inspection of the ruined architecture of his life, was ready to begin building anew, each believed himself competent for the task, and each had that rarest form of courage which forgets the past. For one reared as he had been, it was a revelation to be made aware of such virtues lying at the base of very ordinary characters, and a revelation for which he thanked God with devout gratitude. It amounted almost to a discovery of human nature. He had known hitherto little more than a human coterie; he had lived in artificial conditions; and he knew the kind of lives that such conditions bred. Now, for the first time, he touched the primeval; he had joined the company of those whose sole defence and worth lay in their authentic manhood, and he dimly saw that what had seemed a fall in life had been an ascent, for the truly ignoble lay, not below him, but above him. Thus insensibly he drew courage from the fortitude of his companions, and caught from them that spirit of adventure which "street-born" men never know--the spirit which has flung forth the Anglo-Saxon race into every quarter of the globe, and has made them the world's great empire-builders.

On the seventh day out the Atlantic storm-belt, with its miserable monotony of vexed and gloomy seas, was left behind. For a wonder there was no fog upon the Banks; the seas were of an indescribable hue of limpid turquoise, the ship seemed to glide across a far-glimmering floor, and the wind had a tonic sweetness and renewing potency. The blood sang in the veins, the eye took a deeper colour, and among all the fugitives of the lower deck there was not one who did not move with a brisker step. Laughter ran along the deck; a child beating a tin cup with a spoon was the object of general admiration; languid faces smiled, and among the women a fresh ribbon on the hair or a glance of innocent coquettishness in the eye marked the advent of a new zest in life.

Arthur stood against a bulk-head, watching with delighted eyes the bright elusive colours of the sea, varying from the clearest bottle-green where the ship's bulk clove the waters to the deepest purple where a cloud drove its shadow like a chariot across the liquid plain. Vyse stood beside him, his rugged face reddened by the fresh wind.

"Looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he remarked. "The sea somehow makes a man think better of himself."

"Yes," said Arthur. "I feel that too. Life seems larger."

"That reminds me of something I wish to say to you," said Vyse. "You and me's been good friends upon the voyage, and if you won't be offended, I'd like to ask you a question."

"You won't offend me. What is it?"

"I've wondered what you might be going to do when you reached New York."

"Well, to tell you the truth, Vyse, I don't know. I have to begin a new life, but I don't in the least know how."

"I guessed something of the sort. Well, what I wanted to say was this. Men as is Englishmen and has travelled together like you and me should stick together, shouldn't they? Now, I'm only a plain man, and you're a gentleman, but maybe I might help you a bit. I'd like to give you my address. A pal of mine gave it me. And if ever you don't know where to go, come to me, and you'll be kindly welcome."

"I believe I shall," said Arthur simply. "And I thank you from my heart."

The kindness of Vyse touched him more deeply than he could say. It was another evidence of that fine courtesy which exists in all simple natures, and he took it as a fresh assurance of that worth of human nature itself which he had discovered on the voyage.

Two days later Fire Island was passed, the long flat shore of Long Island lay like a yellow line drawn across the water, and in the afternoon the screw ceased from its long labour, and the ship lay at rest off Sandy Hook. The harbour with its green bluffs, studded with lawns and white verandahed houses, opened up; the tremendous battlements of New York bulked against the distant skyline; and in the foreground, like a colossal watcher of the gate, strode the Statue of Liberty.

"Look," said Vyse, nudging Arthur's arm and pointing to the bows, where a multitude of emigrants stood at gaze.

And in truth it was a scene not easily forgotten. Yellow-haired Scandinavians, with something of the old Viking stature and clear resoluteness of eye, watched the unfolding scene; Hungarians in embroidered jackets gathered in a separate group; Danes, Germans, and Russians were there, all silent with an emotion which might have been apprehension or anticipation; but in the foreground, the unconscious centre of all eyes, knelt a group of Italian men and women. They were crossing themselves devoutly, their ecstatic eyes raised to the gigantic figure of Liberty with her lamp.

"What are they doing?" said Arthur, and he found himself whispering as though he waited in some dim cathedral for the elevation of the Host.

"They call that there Statue of Liberty the American Madonna, so they tell me," said Vyse.

The reply thrilled him as the whisper of the oracle might have thrilled the worshippers long since beneath the oaks of Dodona. The American Madonna, the calm-faced Mother standing at the gates of empire with impartial welcome, her uplifted torch lighting her new-found children to the path of novel destinies--there was a sacramental virtue in the thought, and it shone through his mind like a heavenly omen.

"Ave Madonna!" cried the kneeling group, each with eyes fixed upon that lofty brow of bronze, as if they expected instantly the face to quicken with a human tenderness, the head to stoop in condescending grace.

Perhaps it did. In that clear and sunny air the face appeared to smile, and from the outstretched hand there came to each humble suppliant the veritable grace of hope.

And then the moment passed; the ship moved on; from a Titanic structure, pierced with many windows, a babel of voices clashed upon the still air, and in another half hour the ship, her long voyage done, swung slowly to her berth.

XII

MR. WILBUR MEREDITH LEGION

Were a man never so lonely, there is something in a first introduction to a strange city which communicates a spirit of elation. The mere strangeness of what he sees, the novel aspect of things, the touch of the original and unexpected in the buildings, the conformation of the streets, the faces of the hurrying throngs--this new note of life, everywhere audible, is itself so surprising and absorbing that the mind is insensibly withdrawn from the contemplation of private griefs and memories. A more exact examination may reveal the depressing fact that a new world is new alone in name; that men carry their conventions with them wheresoever they travel, and may reproduce upon the loneliest rock of the Pacific or in the heart of the Sahara the complete social counterpart of those narrower forms of civilisation which they might be supposed to have renounced for ever. But even so, it still remains true that the thing which seems new is really new to us, for we live by our sensations as much as by our knowledge. He who cannot yield himself to this illusion of the senses will certainly deny himself the finer pleasures of existence; he will march across the world with the stiff air of the pedant, who sacrifices poetry to precision, declining more and more into a bloomless frugality of life, until at last not alone the outer world but the inner places of his own heart will become arid as a desert.

Arthur was much too young to reject the illusion of the senses, and too essentially a poet to desire to do so. He had his own private griefs, and they were by no means a negligible burden. In the noisy darkness of the long nights at sea, when the clanging of the piston kept him wakeful, he had again and again reviewed these griefs with a self-torturing persistence. Would he ever see his mother again?--and sometimes out of the heart of the black night a voice told him he would not. Would that exquisite but slender bond that held him to Elizabeth withstand the strain of a dateless separation? Would he find the things he sought, have strength to build the life he had had the vision to design, justify himself before the world? These and many cognate thoughts oppressed him; they wrote their abrupt interrogations on the curtain of the night, until he hid his face from them, and could have wept for weakness. But in spite of these oppressions, his spirit had gained both in hope and fortitude upon the voyage. He had begun to find himself blunderingly, as all men must at first, yet with some sincerity and real truth of vision. Two things he had discovered in himself which appeared to him a sufficient base for life, at once a programme and a creed--the one was the fixed determination to be content only with the best kind of life, the other was a faith in the Guiding Hand. From this creed he drew both his inspiration and his courage, and the more he dwelt upon it the more his heart leaped to meet the future, and the less did he regret the dissolution of the past.

And so that first vision of the New World thrilled him with a vague but joyous wonder. New York impressed him as the most superb of all examples of man's will to live. Here, upon a narrow strip of rock, the most ill-fitted spot in all the world for a city metropolitan, man had compelled nature to his purpose; he had disregarded her intention and had triumphed over it; he had bridged the very seas with ropes of steel, carried his means of locomotion into the upper air, and, unable wholly to escape the limitation of the jealous earth, had invaded the sky with his monstrous fortresses of steel and masonry. The very absence of grace, suavity, dignity in all he saw was itself impressive. Brutal as it was, yet was it not also the assertion of a strength which made for its object with a kind of elemental directness, not only scorning obstacles, but defying in its course the most august conventions of the centuries? The will to live--that was the legend flaunted by invisible banners on each sky-daring tower; the city hummed and sang with its crude music; it was written on every face he met in lines of grim endeavour. And it was a needed lesson for such as he. It struck him like a buffet from a strong hand, roused him like a challenge. To the perpetual oncoming hosts of invaders from an older world, New York spoke its iron gospel, "Man is unconquerable, if he have the will to conquer." And the oncoming host received that stern gospel with acclamation as indeed good news--not the highest gospel, nor the sweetest, but assuredly a needed gospel.

Certainly his situation called for both fortitude and hopefulness, for it was highly precarious. He had left London in such haste that he had had no time to make any plans for the future; he had simply acted on an imperative instinct of the soul to assert its rights, to seize upon immediate freedom. A voice within him had whispered, "Now or never," and in a sudden access of resolution he had broken his bonds. He did not regret its precipitation, but he had begun to perceive its consequences.

The only persons to whom he had confided his intention were Hilary Vickars and Mrs. Bundy. Immediately after the midnight interview with his mother he had gone to Vickars, who listened to his story in grave silence. How every detail of that hour passed with Hilary Vickars stood out in his memory! He could see the face of Vickars, pale and eager, as it bent toward him; he remembered how he noted that the lock of hair that fell across his forehead was newly streaked with gray, and how the veins in the long thin hands showed every intricate reticulation. He recollected how he watched a little patch of sunlight as it crept across the floor, saying to himself with a kind of childish irrelevance, "When it touches the wainscot, I must go." And what length of years or gulfs of immense vicissitude could obliterate the face of Elizabeth, as he saw it through that difficult hour--so pale, so sweet, so intense, her lips parted in surprise, her eyes signalling to him messages of faith and constancy?

"You are doing right," said Vickars, and he had laid the long, blue-veined hand upon his head in benediction; and then Elizabeth had taken Arthur's hand in hers, and kissed it softly, and held it for a moment to her bosom--and both acts had been done so solemnly that they seemed like sacred rites in a religious ceremony.

When he rose to go--it was in the exact moment when the patch of sunlight touched the wainscot--Vickars had offered him some practical advice.

"I wish I could help you," he said. "Let me see, it's New York you're going to, isn't it?"

"Yes--New York."

"Well, there's a man there I know slightly--I met him once over a negotiation for book rights in the States. He had an odd name--probably that's why I remember him--Wilbur Meredith Legion, and he seemed to be a decent fellow. It won't do you any harm to have an introduction to him."

From a pigeon-hole in his desk Vickars produced a card: "Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion, Vermont Building, Broadway, New York. Literary and Press Agent."

"You'll find him interesting, at all events," said Vickars, "and he may be able to put you in the way of using your pen."

From Lonsdale Road Arthur had gone to Mrs. Bundy's. That redoubtable woman at once rose to the occasion, and indulged herself in a flight of prophecy which would have done credit to the wildest programmes of Mr. Bundy.

"You'll make your fortune before you're thirty," she exclaimed. "Think of Carnegie."

And thereupon she poured forth a stream of exhilarating and incorrect information, which sounded strangely like excerpts from Bundy's prospectuses, so that it seemed as though a conjurer flung a dozen golden balls of sudden wealth into the air, and kept them flashing and gyrating for some seconds with amazing ingenuity.

"Stop!--stop!" said Arthur, laughing.

"Not a bit of it," she replied. "I only wish you could meet Bundy. He'd be the man to help you."

"Where is Mr. Bundy just now?"

"The last I heard he was in Texas. He was negotiating the purchase of forty thousand acres of land which he says is the finest in the world. Let me see--why, to be sure, he said he'd be in New York before Christmas. He always stops at the Astor House. No doubt you'll find him there."

"I will certainly look for him," said Arthur.

"Do. If there's any man can make your fortune, it's Bundy." And then, with unremarked inconsistency, she added, "I wish I could give you something, my dear, but it's low water with us just now. Stop, though; here's something that may be useful." After rummaging in a cupboard she produced a small flat bottle, which contained something which bore a strong resemblance to furniture polish. "It's rum and butter, my dear, and let me tell you it's a splendid remedy for sore throat. Those ships are cold, draughty places, and maybe you'll be glad of it. Bundy always takes it with him on a journey. Well, my dear, let an old woman kiss you, and wish you well," whereupon the motherly creature flung her arms round his neck and kissed him heartily. The two Bundy boys, coming in at that moment from the back garden, where they had spent an exhilarating hour in lassoing a collie dog, stared round-eyed at this proceeding, the younger of the two remarking with an air of solemn impudence, "I'll tell father"--whereupon Mrs. Bundy had chased them out of the kitchen with many threats, and it was thus, in a gust of laughter, he had taken leave of his old friend. She had stood at her door till the last moment when he disappeared down the road, waving her hand energetically, and in spite of all that was ridiculous in the scene, Arthur felt a real and deep sadness when she faded from his view.

An introduction to a dubious person called Legion, the frail possibility of a rendezvous with Bundy, and a few pounds in his pocket--it must be admitted this was not an exorbitant equipment for the conquest of a new world; but to this exiguous capital there must be added something not readily assessed--the high and hopeful spirit of liberated youth. He had escaped the strangling grip of circumstance; he was free, and the blood moved in his veins with a novel speed and nimbleness; he was at last upon the world's open road.

His first act was to secure a room at the old Astor House, and make inquiries for Mr. Bundy. He addressed these inquiries to a clerk who was so busily absorbed in the task of picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick that he appeared to resent interruption. When Arthur had twice repeated his question, this youth answered curtly that he didn't know, and turned his back upon him.

"Pardon me, but I have a particular reason for asking. If you are too busy to examine the register, please let me."

The clerk pushed a formidable volume toward him, and went on picking his teeth. There was no Bundy in the long list of recent entries, but there was a wonderful array of places, with strange, exotic names, such as Saratoga, Macon, Fond du Lac, Pueblo, and a hundred others that were musical with old-world memories. Upon that sordid page they shone like gems; they exhaled a perfume of secular romance; Memphis and Carthagena, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rome, Valparaiso and Paris, jostled each other in the wildest incongruity, as if each bore witness to some ancient mode of life which had helped to form the strange amalgam which called itself American. He was so delighted with this glittering tournament of words that at length the clerk, remarking his interest, condescended to inquire, "Found it?"

"Mr. Bundy? No; he doesn't appear to be here."

"What like was he?"

"An Englishman. A small man, very quick and active; interested in mines, I think."

"Well, why didn't you say he was interested in mines, any way? Then I should have known. He was here six months ago, stayed a week, private lunch every day in Parlour A, floating a syndicate for Texas land. I know him. Wanted me to take shares. Said he'd be back in a month. Hasn't come. Guess he's bust."

"He's expected at Christmas, isn't he?"

"Can't say. If you make out to know Mr. Bundy, like you say, you'd know that it's his pecooliarity not to answer to anybody's expectations. He's a live man, is Bundy. Yes, sir, for a Britisher he's the liveliest man I know."

With this unsolicited testimonial to the liveliness of Mr. Bundy he had to be content.

"I'll let you know when he comes," said the clerk more graciously. "I'll see you don't miss him."

"You don't know his address, do you?"

"Why, let me see. Yes, he left an address. Here it is--Bundy, Curtis House, Oklahoma City; but, you know, he won't be there. You can write and try; the Oklahoma people will trace him for you."

"Thank you, I will do so," said Arthur, and withdrew to his bedroom, where he spent an interested half-hour in studying the uses of a large coil of rope which was conspicuously displayed near the window, together with minute directions as to what to do in case of fire. He fell asleep that night with the directions in case of fire, and the exotic names he had read, and the remembered rhythm of the steamer piston all singing together in his mind, in an infinite succession of strophes, at the end of which clashed like a cymbal the words Bundy and Oklahoma.

The next morning he sought the office of Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion. He was whirled rapidly in an elevator to the eleventh floor of a populous and narrow building. When, after some explanations made to an indifferent office-boy, whose jaws appeared to be afflicted with a curious rotary motion, due, as he afterwards discovered, to the mastication of chewing-gum, he was ushered into the presence of the agent. Mr. Legion proved to be a stout, elderly man, clean-shaved, with a high, benevolent forehead, and a most remarkable squint. He had quite a patriarchal air, a manner that might be termed diaconal, and a suave and insinuating voice.

"Ah! you come from my friend, my dear friend, Vickars. A most remarkable man!" But when Arthur mentioned Vickars' latest book, he observed that Mr. Wilbur Legion did not appear to have heard of it.

"We handle such an immense quantity of stuff," he said apologetically. "The world's greatest authors come to us. They are beginning to find out what we can do for them commercially. Have you ever heard of Sampson E. Dodge?"

Arthur confessed his ignorance.

"One of our brightest young men, sir. A man destined to take rank with our greatest writers. You must have seen his story, _The Perambulator with a Thousand Wheels_. It has sold a hundred thousand. Two years ago he was a clerk in a dry goods store, and to-day he is among the most popular of our American authors. You've not heard of him? Well, you are to be excused, sir. We have not yet operated in Great Britain. Great Britain appears to have a prejudice against our great writers. Wilbur M. Legion means to wake Great Britain up, sir. This state of wilful ignorance cannot exist much longer. Great Britain cannot afford, I say, to be ignorant of the work of Mr. Sampson E. Dodge."

"I see that I, as well as Great Britain, have a good deal to learn," said Arthur, with quiet irony.

"You have, indeed. Not to know Mr. Sampson E. Dodge is to argue yourself unknown, as some one on your side of the water once said--Browning, wasn't it?"

"Not Browning, I think."

"Well, it's true just the same. I suppose you don't know our new poets either, do you? Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum, for example. I am happy to say that I operate all her poetry for her. She writes a poem a day, sometimes three or four, and I place them for her in the magazines and journals of the country. Her _Ode to Washington_ has been generally admired. Her little talks with women on the management of the home and the baby are even more popular than her poems. When I first knew her, she was earning nothing, sir; it is a proud reflection that to-day, through my efforts, her income is at least ten thousand dollars a year."

Mr. Legion was evidently prepared to indulge himself at length in personal reminiscences. In the course of ten minutes he had given sufficient biographies of his leading patrons, including not only the details of their earnings, but many particulars of their private lives--such as the fact that Mr. Sampson E. Dodge was not always strictly sober, and Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum had been twice divorced. And with that amiable American frankness which stands in such marked contrast to the reticence of the British man of business, Mr. Legion proceeded to declare the amount of his own earnings, the number of his children, his fatherly hopes for Ulysses E. Legion, "a smart boy, sir," who was doing well at the high school, together with some account of how he first met Mrs. Legion, and his intentions to take his entire family to Europe, at an early date. He concluded by asking Arthur to lunch with him, and pressed on his notice a box of cigars (the cost of which he named), and a thick handbook, adorned with many portraits, which explained and justified the world-wide operations of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion.

Mr. Legion took him to a kind of club which had its quarters in the top storey of a lofty building, from which a marvellous view of New York was obtained. During the process of lunch, which was excellent, Mr. Legion drew Arthur's attention to a large number of persons, all of whom were described as among the "smartest" men in New York. Mr. Legion appeared to know all about them, and Arthur found himself listening to a vast amount of recondite information concerning their upbringing, their early struggles, their matrimonial adventures or misadventures, and above all, the amount of dollars which each was supposed to possess.

"That is the celebrated Stamford Parker, sir,"--indicating a spare, clean-shaved man. "Sure now, you must have heard of him? What? Not heard of him? The greatest magazine proprietor in America, sir. Raised in Vermont, worked on a farm, telegraph operator at Bangor, Maine, bust twice, made good at last, income half a million, his wife a lovely woman. Ah! he sees me; I think he is coming over to speak to me."

The great man strolled across the room, smoking his cigar, and Arthur was effusively introduced to him as a bright young Englishman, fresh from Oxford, and acquainted with all the leading English authors of the day.

"Well, not quite all," said Arthur, with a smile.

The great man received his demur without surprise. When he had returned to his table, Legion said, with a shake of his patriarchal head, "Now, you shouldn't have said that, you know."

"Said what?"

"That you didn't know all your leading authors."

"But I don't know them."

"Well, you needn't have said so. Didn't you see how Parker froze at once? But you don't understand our American way, so you must be excused."

"And what is the American way?"

"Always go a little beyond the truth, but on no account below it--people expect it of you. Leave them to make their discount."

This principle, so unblushingly announced, served Mr. Legion for a text, on which he discanted for some minutes, at the end of which discourse Arthur began to acquire some insight into the meaning of the word "bunkum," and was in a position to apply the method of discount to Mr. Legion's own artless superlatives concerning his business methods and success in life.

Mr. Legion was genial, affable, cordial, in a way which no Englishman could have attained toward an entire stranger, and Arthur was disposed to set a high value on these qualities. Nevertheless, he could not but remark that the agent appeared anxious to evade any practical obligations imposed on him by Vickars's letter of introduction. He drew a picture, almost comic in its gross inaccuracy, as Arthur afterwards discovered, of the extreme ease with which fortunes were made in America, and especially by the pen. Magazine writers lived in sumptuous hotels, and successful novelists built for themselves elaborate palaces. It was the age of young men. A man who had not made a reputation at thirty was a "Has-been." The old method of slowly acquired and slowly widening reputation was obsolete. This was the day of literary booms.

"And after the boom the boomerang!" interjected Arthur.

"Very good--very good indeed. I always thought you Britishers had no sense of humour. It's a general belief in the States. But that's quite a smart saying. Sampson E. Dodge might have said it."

Arthur ought to have blushed at this high praise, but instead, he stolidly explained his epigram, and observed further that no literary man who respected himself would connive in a boom. "Hilary Vickars, for example."

"And that's just where Vickars makes his mistake," said Legion. "And what's the result? He isn't known."

"But he has done excellent work."

"You make me tired," answered Legion. "What's the good of doing excellent work if no one reads it? The public doesn't know good work from bad. Some one's got to tell them. An author must be written up. And let me tell you another thing--the best writing in the world won't attract so much attention as half a dozen spicy paragraphs about the writer. Do you know how _The Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels_ became so popular?"

"Not having seen the book, it can't be supposed I do."

"Well, I'll tell you. I killed the author three times before his book came out."

"You did what?" asked Arthur, with a shout of laughter.

"Killed him, sir. Once he perished on the Matterhorn in a snow-storm. The next time he was killed in a railway accident in Canada. The last time he was lost in a wreck in the South Sea Islands. By this time every one was talking of him. I received no fewer than four hundred press cuttings the last time headed, 'A Famous Author Lost at Sea.' The name of Sampson E. Dodge became as famous as the President's. Of course, when his book came out every one rushed for it."

"And was he really in Switzerland, Canada, or the South Seas?"

"Certainly not. As safe as you are. Writing his book at a farmhouse in Vermont."

"Do you often practise this method, Mr. Legion?"

"Well, it must be applied judiciously, of course. Dodge writes adventure novels, so I give him adventures. But for quieter authors, you must invent something else. It used to be appendicitis, but that's nearly played out. Total loss of memory through overwork used to take, but I found that the authors objected to it. Double pneumonia in a lonely shack among the mountains, where he had gone to obtain local colour for his new novel, answers as well as anything else. And that reminds me--didn't you say Vickars had been ill?"

"Yes, he nearly died. Typhoid fever from bad drains."

"And didn't anybody write it up?"

"Not that I ever heard of."

"My! what a blunder! And with a new book coming out, too. I wish I could have had the handling of that 'story.'"

"I don't think Vickars would have liked that."

"No, I suppose not. You Britishers seem to be afraid of publicity. It almost amounts to a disease."

"We are getting over it by degrees. I assure you there are British authors who are quite reconciled to the immodesty of newspaper puffs. But not men like Vickars. He is one of those who stand in proud silence, and is content to wait for his recognition."

"Well, I guess he'll have to wait till there's skating in Hades. The standing apart business is all very well if you've got the dollars and don't care; but if you haven't, it means starvation." He rose from the table, and said, "Shall we go?"

"Well, there's one thing I want to ask you first," said Arthur, "and as you haven't mentioned it, it seems I must. I want to know if you can put me in the way of earning my living in New York?"

"But, my dear sir, I thought you were just travelling through for pleasure."

"I was afraid that you were under that misconception, and I apologise for not undeceiving you sooner. The plain truth is, I have a very little money in my pocket, no particular experience of life, and my bread to earn."

"Dear me!--dear me! That sounds serious."

"It may easily become so."

The older man looked gravely sympathetic. Suddenly, however, he brightened up, as though he had discovered the solution of the whole problem.

"Well, young man, don't be alarmed," he cried. "Remember that you've come to the land of the free and the home of the brave. There are no feudal distinctions to keep you down here, as in your own unhappy country. This great and glorious Republic allows free play to individual exertions. Sir, America bids you rise, and all you have to do is to go out--and Rise!"

"It would be a good deal more to the purpose if you could tell me how and in what way to begin this process of rising."

"Ah! that's another matter. I must think that over. Come to me again in a day or two. And remember my advice to you is, Go out and Rise!"

He went out, too much amused with Legion's valediction to criticise the man very strictly. It was not until he lay a-bed that night, thinking over the curious adventures of the day, that a strong conviction seized him that Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion was a windbag.

XIII

ADVENTURES OF AN INCOMPETENT

When a youth is thoroughly adrift in a strange city, with no better equipment than a large stock of unapplied aptitudes, he is likely to make many interesting discoveries concerning the real nature of life, the chief of which is that there is no way of living that has not a good deal more in it than meets the eye. By what adroit use of opportunity is the least foothold secured in this crowded world, by what intrigues and stratagems, comparable only with the art which governs battlefields, and less than that art only in the range of its effects! By what quickness of resource, adaptability to circumstance, infinite, weariless plotting and manoeuvering, were only so small a thing achieved as to sell a card of buttons with success! Around this exiled youth jostled the rude, vigorous world of New York, a multitude of men and women each battling toward a certain goal, and not one of whom was not better equipped to win the race than himself. Certain phrases used by this jostling crowd struck upon his ear continuously, such as "to make good," "to deliver the goods." They implied that nothing was valued in New York save the sort of brute force that trampled its way into attention.

"He has made good, sir," was Legion's verdict on that eminent writer, Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, and the phrase was uttered with an accent of reverence which was undoubtedly sincere.

With Legion ideals and intentions counted for nothing; culture and scholarship were worthless commodities; the one thing he could appreciate was concrete success--"to make good."