The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 14

She hadn't forgotten him.

Julia, with her hair down, in an eau de Nile morning wrapper, and frying bacon over a Duplex oil stove, was not lovely, though, indeed, few of us are lovely in the early morning. She had started the flat before she was famous. It was a bachelor girl's flat where the bachelor girl was supposed to do her own cooking as far as breakfast and tea were concerned. Money coming in, Julia had refurnished the flat and requisitioned the part-time service of a maid. Like the doctors of Harley Street who share houses, she shared the services of the maid with another flat dweller, the maid coming to Julia after three o'clock to tidy up and to bring in afternoon tea and admit callers. She was quite well enough off to have employed a whole maid, but she was careful—her publishers could have told you that.

Breakfast over and cleared away, Julia, with her hair still down, set to work at the table before a pile of papers and account books. Never could you have imagined her the Julia of the other evening discoursing on literature with Bobby.

She employed no literary agent, being that rare thing, a writer with an instinct for business. When you see vast publishing houses and opulent publishers rolling in their motor cars, you behold an optical illusion. What you see, or rather what you ought to see, is a host of writers without the instinct for business.

Julia, seated before her papers and turning them over in search of a letter, came just now upon the first letter she had ever received from a publisher—a very curt, businesslike communication, saying that the publisher thought he saw his way to the publishing of her manuscript entitled: “The World at the Gate,” and requesting an interview. With it was tied, as a sort of curiosity, the agreement which she had not signed.

It gave—or would have given—the publisher the copyright and half the American, serial, dramatic, and other rights. It offered ten per cent on the published price of all copies sold after the first five hundred copies; it stipulated that she should give him the next four novels on the same terms, as an inducement to advertise the book properly, and it had drawn from Julia the prompt reply: “Send the typescript of my novel back at once.”

So ended the first lesson.

Then, heartened by his evidently good opinion of her work, she had gone to another publisher. She had joined the Society of Authors, an act as necessary to the making of a successful author as baptism to the making of a Christian. She had studied the publishing tribe, its ways and its works; discovered that they had no more love for books than grocers have for potatoes, and that such a love, should it be exhibited, was unhealthy, for no seller of commodities ought to love the commodities he sells.

Arrived at the great, impudently advertising, roaring, trading firm that dealt with books as men deal with goods in bulk and, interviewing the manager as man to man, she had driven her bargain, and a good one, too. These people published poets and men of sciences—but they respected Julia.

Free of creative work this morning, she could give her full attention to accounts and so forth. She turned to a little book which she sometimes scribbled in, the contents of which she had a vague idea of some time publishing under a pseudonym. It was entitled “Never,” and it was not poetry. It was a thumb book for authors, made up of paragraphs, some long, some short.

“Never dine with a publisher—luncheon is even worse.”

“Never give free copies of books to friends or lend them. The given book is not valued, the lent book is always lost—besides, the booksellers and lending libraries are your real friends.”

“Never lower your price.”

“Never attempt to raise your public.”

“Never argue with a critic.”

“Never be elated with good reviews, or depressed by bad reviews, or enraged by base reviews—the public is your reviewer. It knows,” and so on.

She shut the book, having included:

“Never give a plot away.”

Then she did her hair and thought of Bobby. He had not fixed what hour he would call. That was a clause in the agreement which she had forgotten—she, who was so careful about agreements, too.

She dressed and sat down to read De Maupassant and smoke a cigarette. At luncheon time she went to the restaurant below stairs, and then returned to the flat.

Tea time came and no Bobby. She felt piqued, put on her hat and, as the mountain would not come to Mohammed, Mohammed determined to go to the mountain. Her memory held his address—care of Tozer, 12B, the Albany.

She walked to the Albany, arriving there a little after five o'clock. Tozer was in and he opened the door himself.

“Is Mr. Ravenshaw at home?” asked Julia.

“No,” said Tozer, “he's away. Gone the country.”

“Gone to the country?”

“Yes, he went to-day.”

Tozer had at once spotted Julia as the lady of the plot. He was as unconventional as she and he wanted further acquaintance with this fascinator of his protégé.

“I think we are almost mutual acquaintances,” said he. “Won't you come in? My name is Tozer, and Ravenshaw is my best friend. I'd like to talk to you about him. Won't you come in?”

“Certainly,” said the other. “My name is Delyse—I dare say you know it.”

“I know it well,“ said Tozer.

“I don't mean by my books,” said Julia, taking her seat in the comfortable sitting room, “but from Mr. Ravenshaw.”

“From both,” said Tozer. “And what I want to see is Ravenshaw's name as well known as yours, some day. Bobby has been a spendthrift with his time and he has lots of cleverness.”

“Lots,” said Julia.

Tozer, who had a keen eye for character, had passed Julia as a sensible person—he had never seen her in one of her love fits, and she was a lady. Just the person to look after Bobby.

“He has gone down to the country to-day with an old gentleman, his uncle.”

“I know all about him,” said Julia.

“Bobby has told you, then?”

“Yes.”

“About the attack of youth?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a whole family party of them went off in a motor car to-day. Bobby called here for his luggage and I went into Vigo Street and saw them off.”

“How do you mean, a family party?”

“The youthful old gentleman and a big blond man and Bobby and an old lady and a pretty girl.”

Julia swallowed slightly.

“Relations?”

“No, French, I think, the ladies were. Quite nice people, I believe, though poor. The old gentleman had picked them up in some of his wanderings.”

“Bob—Mr. Ravenshaw promised to see me to-day,” said Julia. “We are engaged—I speak quite frankly—at least, as good as engaged. You can understand.”

“Quite.”

“He ought to have let me know,” said she broodingly.

“He ought.”

“Have they gone to Upton-on-Hill, do you know?”

“They have. The Rose Hotel.”

Julia thought for a while. Then she got up to go.

“If you want my opinion,” said Tozer, “I think the whole lot want looking after. They seemed quite a pleasant party, but responsibility seemed somewhat absent. The old lady, charming though she was, seemed to me scarcely enough ballast for so much youth.”

“I understand,” said Julia. Then she went off and Tozer lit a pipe.

The pretty young French girl was troubling him. She had charmed even him, and he knew Bobby, and his wisdom indicated that a penniless beauty was not the first rung of the ladder to success in life.

Julia, on the other hand, was solid. So he thought.