A Black Adonis Part 5

"Yes," interrupted Archie, dreamily, "once. At Capri. She was fifteen.

Her feet were pink, like a sh.e.l.l. She was walking along the sh.o.r.e in the early evening."

"With the dirt of the soil on them!" exclaimed Mr. Gouger, in disgust.

"No, she had just emerged from her bath. The sand there was clean as a carpet, cleaner, in fact. G.o.ds! They were exquisite!"

The critic uttered an exclamation.

"I waste time talking to you," he said, sharply. "You are like the rest of the imaginative crowd. It is a pity you were not gifted with the divine afflatus, that you could have added your volumes to the nonsense they print."

"And which you are always glad to get," interpolated Mr. Weil.

"Because it will sell. Cutt & Slashem are in this business to make money, and my thoughts must be directed to the saleable quality of the ma.n.u.scripts submitted. If _I_ was running the concern, though, I would touch the mooney, maundering mess. It makes my flesh creep, sometimes, to read it."

Archie Weil uttered another of his winsome laughs.

"How would you like to be a serpent," he asked, "and have your flesh creep all the time? But before we dismiss this matter of Miss Fern, I want you to clear your mind, if you can, of the haunting suspicions you always have when a woman is concerned. You know there are concerns in the city who would print her book, with a proper amount paid down, if it had neither sense, syntax nor orthography. If she wants it fixed up, I can find tailors to help her out; and if her papa wants it on the market, why shouldn't he be able to get it there? Now, let us talk a little about Roseleaf."

Mr. Gouger brightened at the change of subject. His interest in Mr.

Roseleaf was genuine, and he had already learned that Archie had formed a sort of copartners.h.i.+p with the novelist, in the hope of making his future work a success. While the critic could not be said to have any real faith in the arrangement, it certainly interested him.

"What strange freak will you take to next?" he asked. "And do you really expect to make a novelist out of that young man?"

Mr. Weil's eyes had a twinkle in them.

"Didn't you say, yourself, that it could be done?" he inquired. "If I have made any mistake in my investment, I shall charge the loss to you."

The critic reflected a minute.

"I'm not so certain it _can't_ be done," he said. "But that's quite different from investing money in it, as you are doing. A man wants pretty near a certainty before he puts up the stuff."

"You greedy fellow!" exclaimed Weil. "Will you never think of anything but gain? I have to spend about so much money every year, in a continual attempt to amuse myself, and it might as well be this way as another. I have a doc.u.ment, signed and solemnly sealed, by which I am to back him against the field in the interest of romantic and realistic literature, and in return he is to give me a third of the net profits of his writings. I don't know that I have done so badly. Perhaps you may live to see Cutt & Slashem pay us a handsome sum in royalties."

Mr. Gouger looked oddly at his friend, whose face was perfectly serious.

"What are you going to begin with?" he asked.

"Love, of course. It is the A B C, as well as the X Y Z of the whole business."

"What kind of love?"

"The best that can be got," replied Weil, now laughing in spite of himself. "The very finest quality in the market. Oh, we shall do this up brown, I tell you."

"What have you done so far?" asked Gouger.

"You want to know it all, eh?" responded Mr. Weil. "I don't think I am justified in letting you too deeply into our secrets. However, you are too honorable to betray us, and so here goes: I have instructed my protege that he must fall violently under the tender pa.s.sion before next Sat.u.r.day night."

"With a lady whom you have selected, of course?"

"By no means. He must catch his own sweethearts."

Mr. Gouger played with his watchchain.

"And this is Tuesday," he commented. "Do you think he will succeed?"

"He must," laughed Weil. "It's like the case of the boy who was digging out the woodchuck. 'The minister's coming to dinner.'"

"You might at least have got an introduction for him," said Gouger, reflectively.

"Not I. There's nothing in our agreement that puts such a task on me.

Besides, there's no romance in an introduction. He would write a story as prosy as one of Henry James' if he started off like that."

Mr. Gouger nodded his head slowly.

"That would be something to avoid at all hazards," he a.s.sented.

And at this juncture, to the surprise of both the parties to this conversation, the young man of whom they were speaking entered the room.

"I was telling Mr. Gouger of our agreement," said Mr. Weil, as soon as the greetings were over. "How do you get along? Have you discovered your heroine yet?"

Mr. Roseleaf answered, with an air of timidity, in the negative.

"I don't quite know where to find one," he said.

Mr. Weil spread out his arms to their fullest capacity.

"There are thirty millions of them in the United States alone," he exclaimed. "Out of that number you ought to find a few whom you can study. What a pity that _I_ cannot write! I would go out of that door and in ten minutes I would have a subject ready for vivisection."

The younger man raised his eyebrows slightly.

"But, that kind of a woman--would be what you would want--the kind that would let you talk to her on a mere street acquaintance!"

Mr. Weil leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs.

"Oh, yes," he said. "She would do for a beginning. Don't imagine that none of these easy going girls are worth the attention of a novelist.

Sometimes they are vastly more interesting than the bread and b.u.t.ter product of the drawing rooms. It won't do, in your profession, to ignore any sort of human being."

Roseleaf breathed a sigh as soft as his name.

"You were right, Mr. Gouger," he said, turning to that gentleman. "I do not know anything. I have judged by appearances, and I now see that truth cannot be learned in that way."

"All the better!" broke in Archie. "The surest progress is made by the man who has learned his deficiencies. You remember the hare and the tortoise. I have read somewhere that the race is not always to the swift. You must treat your fellow men and women as if you had just arrived on this earth from the planet Mars. You must dig through the strata of conventionality to the virgin soil beneath. The great human pa.s.sions are l.u.s.t and avarice, though they take a thousand forms, in many of which they have more polite names. For instance, the former, when kept within polite boundaries, is usually known as Love. As Avarice makes but a sorry theme for the romantic writer, Love is the subject that must princ.i.p.ally claim your attention. All the world loves a lover, while the miser is despised even by those who cringe beneath the power of his gold. Study the women, my lad, and when you know them thoroughly begin your great novel in earnest."

Roseleaf listened with rapt attention.

"And the men?" he asked.

"The men," was the quick reply, "are too transparent to require study.

It is the women, with their ten million tricks to cajole and wheedle us, that afford the best field for your efforts."