The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

by Edith Wharton

  Diadems and Faggots was now two years old, and the moment was at hand when its author might have counted on regaining the blessed shelter of oblivion—if only he had not written another book! For it was the worst part of his plight that the result of his first folly had goaded him to the perpetration of the next—that one of the incentives (hideous thought!) to his new work had been the desire to extend and perpetuate his popularity. And this very week the book was to come out, and the letters, the cursed letters, would begin again!

  Wistfully, almost plaintively, he looked at the breakfast-tray with which Strett presently appeared. It bore only two notes and the morning journals, but he knew that within the week it would groan under its epistolary burden. The very newspapers flung the fact at him as he opened them.

  READY ON MONDAY.

  GEOFFREY BETTON’S NEW NOVEL

  ABUNDANCE.

  BY THE AUTHOR OF DIADEMS AND FAGGOTS.

  FIRST EDITION OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND

  ALREADY SOLD OUT.

  ORDER NOW.

  A hundred and fifty thousand volumes! And an average of three readers to each! Half a million of people would be reading him within a week, and every one of them would write to him, and their friends and relations would write too. He laid down the paper with a shudder.

  The two notes looked harmless enough, and the caligraphy of one was vaguely familiar. He opened the envelope and looked at the signature: Duncan Vyse. He had not seen the name in years—what on earth could Duncan Vyse have to say? He ran over the page and dropped it with a wondering exclamation, which the watchful Strett, re-entering, met by a tentative “Yes, sir?”

  “Nothing. Yes—that is—” Betton picked up the note. “There’s a gentleman, a Mr. Vyse, coming at ten.”

  Strett glanced at the clock. “Yes, sir. You’ll remember that ten was the hour you appointed for the secretaries to call, sir.”

  Betton nodded. “I’ll see Mr. Vyse first. My clothes, please.”

  As he got into them, in the state of nervous hurry that had become almost chronic with him, he continued to think about Duncan Vyse. They had seen a great deal of each other for the few years after both had left Harvard: the hard happy years when Betton had been grinding at his business and Vyse—poor devil!—trying to write. The novelist recalled his friend’s attempts with a smile; then the memory of one small volume came back to him. It was a novel: The Lifted Lamp. There was stuff in that, certainly. He remembered Vyse’s tossing it down on his table with a gesture of despair when it came back from the last publisher. Betton, taking it up indifferently, had sat riveted till daylight. When he ended, the impression was so strong that he said to himself: “I’ll tell Apthorn about it—I’ll go and see him to-morrow.” His own secret literary yearnings increased his desire to champion Vyse, to see him triumph over the dullness and timidity of the publishers. Apthorn was the youngest of the guild, still capable of opinions and the courage of them, a personal friend of Betton’s, and, as it happened, the man afterward to become known as the privileged publisher of Diadems and Faggots. Unluckily the next day something unexpected turned up, and Betton forgot about Vyse and his manuscript. He continued to forget for a month, and then came a note from Vyse, who was ill, and wrote to ask what his friend had done. Betton did not like to say “I’ve done nothing,” so he left the note unanswered, and vowed again: “I’ll see Apthorn.”

  The following day he was called to the West on business, and was away a month. When he came back, there was a third note from Vyse, who was still ill, and desperately hard up. “I’ll take anything for the book, if they’ll advance me two hundred dollars.” Betton, full of compunction, would gladly have advanced the sum himself; but he was hard up too, and could only swear inwardly: “I’ll write to Apthorn.” Then he glanced again at the manuscript, and reflected: “No—there are things in it that need explaining. I’d better see him.”

  Once he went so far as to telephone Apthorn, but the publisher was out. Then he finally and completely forgot.

  One Sunday he went out of town, and on his return, rummaging among the papers on his desk, he missed The Lifted Lamp, which had been gathering dust there for half a year. What the deuce could have become of it? Betton spent a feverish hour in vainly increasing the disorder of his documents, and then bethought himself of calling the maid-servant, who first indignantly denied having touched anything (“I can see that’s true from the dust,” Betton scathingly remarked), and then mentioned with hauteur that a young lady had called in his absence and asked to be allowed to get a book.

  “A lady? Did you let her come up?”

  “She said somebody’d sent her.”

  Vyse, of course—Vyse had sent her for his manuscript! He was always mixed up with some woman, and it was just like him to send the girl of the moment to Betton’s lodgings, with instructions to force the door in his absence. Vyse had never been remarkable for delicacy. Betton, furious, glanced over his table to see if any of his own effects were missing—one couldn’t tell, with the company Vyse kept!—and then dismissed the matter from his mind, with a vague sense of magnanimity in doing so. He felt himself exonerated by Vyse’s conduct.

  The sense of magnanimity was still uppermost when the valet opened the door to announce “Mr. Vyse,” and Betton, a moment later, crossed the threshold of his pleasant library.

  His first thought was that the man facing him from the hearth-rug was the very Duncan Vyse of old: small, starved, bleached-looking, with the same sidelong movements, the same air of anemic truculence. Only he had grown shabbier, and bald.

  Betton held out a hospitable hand.

  “This is a good surprise! Glad you looked me up, my dear fellow.”

  Vyse’s palm was damp and bony: he had always had a disagreeable hand.

  “You got my note? You know what I’ve come for?”

  “About the secretaryship? (Sit down.) Is that really serious?”

  Betton lowered himself luxuriously into one of his vast Maple armchairs. He had grown stouter in the last year, and the cushion behind him fitted comfortably into the crease of his nape. As he leaned back he caught sight of his image in the mirror between the windows, and reflected uneasily that Vyse would not find him unchanged.

  “Serious?” Vyse rejoined. “Why not? Aren’t you?”

  “Oh, perfectly.” Betton laughed apologetically. “Only—well, the fact is, you may not understand what rubbish a secretary of mine would have to deal with. In advertising for one I never imagined—I didn’t aspire to any one above the ordinary hack.”

  “I’m the ordinary hack,” said Vyse drily.

  Betton’s affable gesture protested. “My dear fellow—. You see it’s not business—what I’m in now,” he continued with a laugh.

  Vyse’s thin lips seemed to form a noiseless “Isn’t it?” which they instantly transposed into the audible reply: “I judged from your advertisement that you want some one to relieve you in your literary work. Dictation, short-hand—that kind of thing?”

  “Well, no: not that either. I type my own things. What I’m looking for is somebody who won’t be above tackling my correspondence.”

  Vyse looked slightly surprised. “I should be glad of the job,” he then said.

  Betton began to feel a vague embarrassment. He had supposed that such a proposal would be instantly rejected. “It would be only for an hour or two a day—if you’re doing any writing of your own?” he threw out interrogatively.

  “No. I’ve given all that up. I’m in an office now—business. But it doesn’t take all my time, or pay enough to keep me alive.”

  “In that case, my dear fellow—if you could come every morning; but it’s mostly awful bosh, you know,” Betton again broke off, with growing awkwardness.

  Vyse glanced at him humorously. “What you want me to write?”

  “Well, that depends—” Betton sketched the obligatory smile. “But I was thinking of the letters you’ll have to answer. Letters about my books, you know—I’v
e another one appearing next week. And I want to be beforehand now—dam the flood before it swamps me. Have you any idea of the deluge of stuff that people write to a successful novelist?”

  As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse’s thin cheek, and his own reflected it in a richer glow of shame. “I mean—I mean—” he stammered helplessly.

  “No, I haven’t,” said Vyse; “but it will be awfully jolly finding out.”

  There was a pause, groping and desperate on Betton’s part, sardonically calm on his visitor’s.

  “You—you’ve given up writing altogether?” Betton continued.

  “Yes; we’ve changed places, as it were.” Vyse paused. “But about these letters—you dictate the answers?”

  “Lord, no! That’s the reason why I said I wanted somebody—er—well used to writing. I don’t want to have anything to do with them—not a thing! You’ll have to answer them as if they were written to you—” Betton pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the drawers of his writing-table.

  “Here—this kind of rubbish,” he said, tossing a packet of letters onto Vyse’s knee.

  “Oh—you keep them, do you?” said Vyse simply.

  “I—well—some of them; a few of the funniest only.”

  Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was glancing over them Betton again caught his own reflection in the glass, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor. It occurred to him for the first time that his high-colored well-fed person presented the image of commercial rather than of intellectual achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of Diadems and Faggots—and he wondered why.

  Vyse laid the letters aside. “I think I can do it—if you’ll give me a notion of the tone I’m to take.”

  “The tone?”

  “Yes—that is, if you expect me to sign your name.”

  “Oh, of course you’re to sign for me. As for the tone, say just what you’d—well, say all you can without encouraging them to answer.”

  Vyse rose from his seat. “I could submit a few specimens,” he suggested.

  “Oh, as to that—you always wrote better than I do,” said Betton handsomely.

  “I’ve never had this kind of thing to write. When do you wish me to begin?” Vyse inquired, ignoring the tribute.

  “The book’s out on Monday. The deluge will probably begin about three days after. Will you turn up on Thursday at this hour?” Betton held his hand out with real heartiness. “It was great luck for me, your striking that advertisement. Don’t be too harsh with my correspondents—I owe them something for having brought us together.”

  II

  The deluge began punctually on the Thursday, and Vyse, arriving as punctually, had an impressive pile of letters to attack. Betton, on his way to the Park for a ride, came into the library, smoking the cigarette of indolence, to look over his secretary’s shoulder.

  “How many of ’em? Twenty? Good Lord! It’s going to be worse than Diadems. I’ve just had my first quiet breakfast in two years—time to read the papers and loaf. How I used to dread the sight of my letter-box! Now I shan’t know that I have one.”

  He leaned over Vyse’s chair, and the secretary handed him a letter.

  “Here’s rather an exceptional one—lady, evidently. I thought you might want to answer it yourself—”

  “Exceptional?” Betton ran over the mauve pages and tossed them down. “Why, my dear man, I get hundreds like that. You’ll have to be pretty short with her, or she’ll send her photograph.”

  He clapped Vyse on the shoulder and turned away, humming a tune. “Stay to luncheon,” he called back gaily from the threshold.

  After luncheon Vyse insisted on showing a few of his answers to the first batch of letters. “If I’ve struck the note I won’t bother you again,” he urged; and Betton groaningly consented.

  “My dear fellow, they’re beautiful—too beautiful. I’ll be let in for a correspondence with every one of these people.”

  Vyse, in reply, mused for a while above a blank sheet. “All right—how’s this?” he said, after another interval of rapid writing.

  Betton glanced over the page. “By George—by George! Won’t she see it?” he exulted, between fear and rapture.

  “It’s wonderful how little people see,” said Vyse reassuringly.

  The letters continued to pour in for several weeks after the appearance of Abundance. For five or six blissful days Betton did not even have his mail brought to him, trusting to Vyse to single out his personal correspondence, and to deal with the rest of the letters according to their agreement. During those days he luxuriated in a sense of wild and lawless freedom; then, gradually, he began to feel the need of fresh restraints to break, and learned that the zest of liberty lies in the escape from specific obligations. At first he was conscious only of a vague hunger, but in time the craving resolved itself into a shame-faced desire to see his letters.

  “After all, I hated them only because I had to answer them”; and he told Vyse carelessly that he wished all his letters submitted to him before the secretary answered them.

  The first morning he pushed aside those beginning: “I have just laid down Abundance after a third reading,” or: “Every day for the last month I have been telephoning my bookseller to know when your novel would be out.” But little by little the freshness of his interest revived, and even this stereotyped homage began to arrest his eye. At last a day came when he read all the letters, from the first word to the last, as he had done when Diadems and Faggots appeared. It was really a pleasure to read them, now that he was relieved of the burden of replying: his new relation to his correspondents had the glow of a love-affair unchilled by the contingency of marriage.

  One day it struck him that the letters were coming in more slowly and in smaller numbers. Certainly there had been more of a rush when Diadems and Faggots came out. Betton began to wonder if Vyse were exercising an unauthorized discrimination, and keeping back the communications he deemed least important. This conjecture carried the novelist straight to his library, where he found Vyse bending over the writing-table with his usual inscrutable pale smile. But once there, Betton hardly knew how to frame his question, and blundered into an inquiry for a missing invitation.

  “There’s a note—a personal note—I ought to have had this morning. Sure you haven’t kept it back by mistake among the others?”

  Vyse laid down his pen. “The others? But I never keep back any.”

  Betton had foreseen the answer. “Not even the worst twaddle about my book?” he suggested lightly, pushing the papers about.

  “Nothing. I understood you wanted to go over them all first.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s safer,” Betton conceded, as if the idea were new to him. With an embarrassed hand he continued to turn over the letters at Vyse’s elbow.

  “Those are yesterday’s,” said the secretary; “here are today’s,” he added, pointing to a meager trio.

  “H’m—only these?” Betton took them and looked them over lingeringly. “I don’t see what the deuce that chap means about the first part of Abundance ‘certainly justifying the title’—do you?”

  Vyse was silent, and the novelist continued irritably: “Damned cheek, his writing, if he doesn’t like the book. Who cares what he thinks about it, anyhow?”

  And his morning ride was embittered by the discovery that it was unexpectedly disagreeable to have Vyse read any letters which did not express unqualified praise of his books. He began to fancy that there was a latent rancor, a kind of baffled sneer, under Vyse’s manner; and he decided to return to the practice of having his mail brought straight to his room. In that way he could edit the letters before his secretary saw them.

  Vyse made no comment on the change, and Betton was reduced to wondering whether his imperturbable composure were the mask of complete indifference or of a watchful jealousy. The latter view being more agreeable to his employer’s self-esteem, t
he next step was to conclude that Vyse had not forgotten the episode of The Lifted Lamp, and would naturally take a vindictive joy in any unfavorable judgments passed on his rival’s work. This did not simplify the situation, for there was no denying that unfavorable criticisms preponderated in Betton’s correspondence. Abundance was neither meeting with the unrestricted welcome of Diadems and Faggots, nor enjoying the alternative of an animated controversy: it was simply found dull, and its readers said so in language not too tactfully tempered by comparisons with its predecessor. To withhold unfavorable comments from Vyse was, therefore, to make it appear that correspondence about the book had died out; and its author, mindful of his unguarded predictions, found this even more embarrassing. The simplest solution would be to get rid of Vyse; and to this end Betton began to address his energies.

  One evening, finding himself unexpectedly disengaged, he asked Vyse to dine; it had occurred to him that, in the course of an after-dinner chat, he might hint his feeling that the work he had offered his friend was unworthy so accomplished a hand.

  Vyse surprised him by a momentary hesitation. “I may not have time to dress.”

  Betton brushed the objection aside. “What’s the odds? We’ll dine here—and as late as you like.”

  Vyse thanked him, and appeared, punctually at eight, in all the shabbiness of his daily wear. He looked paler and more shyly truculent than usual, and Betton, from the height of his florid stature, said to himself, with the sudden professional instinct for “type”: “He might be an agent of something—a chap who carries deadly secrets.”

  Vyse, it was to appear, did carry a deadly secret; but one less perilous to society than to himself. He was simply poor—unpardonably, irremediably poor. Everything failed him, had always failed him: whatever he put his hand to went to bits.