Читать книгу White Banners - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 12

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It was not a good idea, at all. Flushed with plaudits—for the speech at the University Club was a distinct success—Paul gave himself to the new book with a devotion that deserved a high reward. Impatient to take off a trial balance on his account with fame and fortune, he asked permission of a publisher to send on the first half of his work (that was about the middle of February) and having had a favourable response he posted the manuscript, after which it was difficult to write, his nervous eagerness for a reply from the East having distracted his attention. In this pitiful state of anxiety he waited for six weeks, at first regarding the postman as an angel of light who would one day bring him a certificate to the new freedom, but eventually coming to consider the chap as a venomously unscrupulous churl.

One day a letter came, on April 1st it was, as if to add a neat touch of derision to the casual unconcern with which the publisher doubted whether a work of this sort could expect to be commercially practical.

It was a heavy blow, and Paul was in poor condition to meet it, for his wanton day-dreaming over the favourable reply he had so blandly anticipated had already dulled his capacity for earnest work. Marcia had sensed this danger, one day saying to him, playfully, but with conviction, "You'd better stop spending that money now—and carry on with the book."

Unable to reconcile himself to the catastrophe, he girded up his loins after a week of heavy sulking, revised the early part of his manuscript and sent it off again to another publisher. It was easy enough to understand how the judgment of one house might not coincide with another. Had not Ben-Hur knocked about the country for a whole year before it found a firm far-sighted enough to appreciate its merit?

The next rejection was more prompt and more briefly stated. They were grateful for his courtesy in wanting them to see his book, but it did not fit into their publication programme.

After that, the manuscript journeyed to three more publishers, the last of whom replied, "We have examined so much of the work as you have sent us—" Ah—perhaps that was the trouble, thought Paul. They didn't want to pass on a mere fragment of a book. He would complete it!

And he did complete it by working zealously all summer, autumn, and into early winter. It was sent the rounds of the front-rank publishers. Not until the next May did Paul decide that he had added another failure to the rather formidable array of defeats which had terminated the various projects of recent years. He did not trust himself to talk much about it to Marcia; and she, aware how deep was his hurt, and herself devastated with pity for him, tried to beguile his attention from this latest and most painful of his disillusions.

Foster, who had charge of the University Extension lectures, asked him one day if he would like to go out, occasionally, to near-by towns for evening addresses. There was a small fee attached to these excursions—averaging about twenty dollars. Paul assented, and in February he was sent out twice, once to Milburn and again to Deshler, where he was quite royally entertained and his lectures were handsomely received, especially in Deshler, the local paper covering his appearance with a flattering column that put more lime in his spine than anything that had ever happened to him. Marcia was rejoiced at his expansive mood. That night, after he had read the account of his triumph at Deshler for the dozenth time (he had not realized until now to what extent he had covered himself with glory on that occasion), he sat gazing at the ceiling for a long time, and then, in the awed huskiness of one making an astounding discovery, he said, "Do you know—Marcia—"

She put down The Woman Thou Gavest Me, which everybody was talking about, and gave him her full attention, thinking she knew what was on his mind. "Yes, dear," she said invitingly.

"Marcia—do you know there's a lot of money to be made by lecturing for the chautauquas? I've had a little taste of it now and I know I could do it. I mean to ask Foster to-morrow how one breaks into this game. They can't very well pay you less than fifty dollars a day and you are booked for a five-day week all summer." He scribbled some figures on the back of an envelope. "There would be probably eight weeks of it. Expenses very small. Country towns mostly. Short jumps. Not much paid out for travel. Ought to net fifteen-sixteen hundred dollars. Put it away in the savings bank and the interest on eight months would be—let's see—forty-two dollars more."

In spite of her resolution to see this through with comradely seriousness, Marcia grinned.

"Well—every little helps, doesn't it? That forty-two dollars would be just as good to us as to anybody. It would come nearly staking us to a week's board and lodging in London, if we thought we had to be frugal. I'm going in for it, darling. Here's one thing I know I can do—for I've done it! I'm going on the lecture platform." He pursed his mouth and grew confidential, lowering his tone as against possible eavesdropping. "And some of those boys get fees running into big figures, after they've been properly publicized. It might turn out to be a great thing for us."

But it didn't. Foster explaining that a man had to bring, even to so unexacting an institution as the chautauqua circuit, a platform reputation of more ample dimensions than Paul could boast. He said it kindly enough and promised to give his ambitious colleague some more extension dates next winter. By the time winter had come, however, all Europe was in the grip of war and there was not much of a market for lectures on the life and times and works of Edmund Spenser or anyone else with whose history Paul was conversant.