Jimmy Quixote Part 14

The writing seemed at first the smallest part of it all; it was the sending of the stuff about. Bulky packages came back to the boarding-house, with the names of various papers and magazines stamped aggressively on the covers; and, of course, created comment. Jimmy bore it with a burning face, and tried to call to mind other persecutions endured by the elect of the earth under similar conditions; the stories of sons who had been thrashed by commonplace fathers upon showing marked literary, artistic, or musical ability afforded him keen satisfaction.

Obviously he was on the right road, although no thras.h.i.+ngs in the actual sense were his.

But there came a day--I should rather have written a day of days--when a letter arrived from a paper--a packet far too small to contain the bulky thing that had been sent. Opening it, Jimmy discovered that a certain wonderful being desired to see him; tremblingly, Jimmy sought the office in his dinner-hour, and inquired for the editor. A small boy with no reverence about him--no lowering of the voice in speaking of so great a personage--took his name up; and presently Jimmy stood in the presence, with his knees knocking together, and a curious dryness in his throat.

The editor was a youngish man of a slim appearance and with flaxen hair.

He was seated at an untidy desk, with his coat off, and with a pipe that was cold in his mouth. The room appeared to be decorated for the most part with photographs, chiefly of ladies. Photographs large and small--Continental photographs and English; photographs in costume, and photographs in but little costume at all. Paper clippings were all over the floor; and at the opposite side of the desk a pale boy in spectacles was at work upon a drawing that seemed to the unpractised glance of Jimmy already completed.

The man looked up at him, scanning him narrowly, and nodded towards a chair. "Well, Mr. Larrance," he said, "and what can we do for you?"

Jimmy thought it was rather the other way about, in the sense that he was desirous of knowing what he could do for the editor; but he smiled feebly, and murmured something about a letter he had received. The man was silent for a moment or two, as though debating what to say; finally he looked up, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his eyes shrewdly, and spoke.

"I suppose you run away with the idea that you're a genius--eh?" Jimmy shook his head and blushed at the mere suggestion, although he had a sneaking feeling that that suggestion might not be so very wrong after all. "Because, if you've got that sort of idea, you're not much good to us. You may be able to write some day; there are indications of it; but you've got a lot to learn. How long's your story?"

He took up the precious ma.n.u.script from beside him, and carelessly turned over the leaves. Jimmy had not thought of that vital point; he said he wasn't quite sure.

"You're like all the rest, my boy," retorted the young man, throwing the packet on his desk. "You write a story to please yourself--and you ramble on, and you fill it with accounts of green trees, and waving gra.s.s, and birds, and G.o.d knows what; things that everybody knows about, and don't want to read about; and you send us--say twenty thousand words--when we run to anything from five hundred to three thousand.

Bless you, you wouldn't look at the paper--would you, now?"

Jimmy murmured that he had seen the paper--well, everywhere; and the young man grinned.

"That's our circulation; you couldn't help seeing it," he said. "But what do you think would happen to us if we printed that"--he indicated Jimmy's ma.n.u.script, without even glancing at it--"and shoved about five pages of it down their throats, just to see what they _would_ swallow?

What would be the result? I'll tell you."

He threw one leg over the arm of the chair, and struck a match; forgot to apply it to the pipe, and blew it out, and dropped it into his waste-paper basket. Jimmy watched him reverently.

"We should first of all be deluged with letters from all the smart young men who read us, and sn.i.g.g.e.r at us, and like us; and they'd want to know what the something something we'd printed it for, or where we found it; and they'd offer to do something a great deal better, just to show us what the public wanted. William," he looked across at the boy at the other desk--"give me a copy of the last for Mr. Larrance--will you?"

The boy stretched out an arm, without looking up, and handed the man a copy of the paper; the editor, after flicking over the leaves complaisantly, pa.s.sed it on to Jimmy. "Just look at that," he said.

Jimmy looked at the thing a little helplessly--turning over the pages mechanically; then he handed it back to the young man. "I see," he murmured.

"No, you don't; you only think you do," retorted the other, not unkindly. "My boy--we ain't out for literature, because we've got a living to make; but we do the thing honestly, and we work pretty hard.

Observe, please."

He flicked over the first leaf, and pointed dramatically to the page disclosed.

"Snippets generally--some American, and some dodged up out of old chestnuts with a new flavour. But"--he held up a forefinger, and winked--"but, I say, doesn't the young man who buys us repeat them over to his friends, and his mother (if the old lady'll stand 'em!), and his girl, and a few others. Page two: a small story, sir, cut straight out of the heart of the Latin Quarter--with a real grisette, and an artist who is going into the Salon in five minutes--and a hopeless love story.

Picture in the middle of the grisette--dodged up from a photograph, with the hair altered. About nine hundred words--and I paid eleven and sixpence for it. He's a beginner; but he'll do well presently. And that isn't his right name."

"It seems very short," Jimmy ventured to say.

"They've got to be short; I cut twenty lines out of this myself; he'd worked in something about his mother's grave, which wasn't in the picture a bit. Page three: picture of two girls and a man--dodged-up joke underneath. Page four: the beginning of our Grand New Serial Story--which you may begin any week by reading the synopsis at the top; I do the synopsis myself, and the ungrateful beast of an author complains bitterly. That takes up--the serial, I mean--three pages and a bit. More pictures; Continental cuttings--we have to tone them down a bit, but we get 'em very cheap--then a compet.i.tion which takes up a page, and for which the prizes are small; then our Beginners' Page; which means that they send us stories, and we cut 'em down a bit, and send 'em a nicey-picey letter, saying they'll do better by and by, and will they please let us hear from 'em again. That's rather a cheap page," he added, contemplatively. "Then we finish up with a couple of novelettes in a nutsh.e.l.l; about six hundred words each--must be full of plot; then answers to correspondents--chiefly love and complexion stuff; and there you are! That's what we call editing," he added, proudly. "You can take that home if you like, and have a good look at it."

"I quite see that any story as long as mine wouldn't suit," said Jimmy, a little mystified. "I ought to have sent it somewhere else." He half rose from his seat.

"Stop a bit," said the young man, taking up the ma.n.u.script, and looking through it with his lips pursed. "Stop a bit." He tossed the thing over on to the other desk, and called to the boy: "William--what should you say was the length?"

William cast an eye over it--the eye of the expert who was not to be deceived, turned to the last page, seemed almost to weigh it in his hand, and then replied.

"Fifteen five hundred--might be a little over," he said, handing it back, and resuming his work as though this were a matter of the smallest interest.

"There you are, you see," exclaimed the editor with a triumphant smile.

"No good at all. But I'll tell you what I think--and I wouldn't tell everybody. It's got an idea in it; and I can a.s.sure you we often get double the quant.i.ty, without any idea at all. Now, I wonder if you're prepared to listen to reason?"

Jimmy indicating that he was prepared to listen to anything, the young man made one or two suggestions. In the first place, he was to take it away, and read it over; he was to take out the idea that was in it, and to boil it down--that was the actual expression used--to something like two thousand words. He was to leave in as much love as possible.

"They'll stand any amount of that sort of thing," said the young man; and he was also to leave in all the sensation. If he came across a tree he was simply to say it was a tree, and not attempt to describe it; nor was he to let himself go on scenery at all. And if he did all that satisfactorily, and didn't spoil the idea, he would have a guinea. "We pay on Fridays," said the young man easily, as though that was the most ordinary part of the business.

"What we could do with you," said the young man, as he shook hands at parting--"would be to take one a fortnight; that would mean half a guinea every blessed week for you. Then now and then we could let you have a novelette to do--fourteen or fifteen thousand words, simply packed with incident--and for those we _do_ pay; you'd get about four ten for those. Then now and then, when you'd got into the way of it, you could do a six or seven-hundred worder; I mean the novelette in a nutsh.e.l.l; and that would be another five bob. So there you are; you wouldn't need to look anywhere else. And always on Fridays, mind you--there would be your little bit waiting for you. Good morning!--and remember we don't want names; we're looking for young talent, and we're teaching it to earn its living."

So this particular young talent went back to the warehouse with dreams; Jimmy was absolutely certain that the thing could be done, and here, almost at once, was a fortune awaiting him. After all, when you came to think of it, it was simply a matter of hard work, but of congenial work at that; an hour or two every evening meant four tens and guineas and five bobs and what not; and when you came to add those together--well, your fortune was made. As a mild beginning, Jimmy tackled that bulky ma.n.u.script which he was to boil down that very night.

In the first place, the beginning must certainly stand. There was the full description not only of the heroine, but of her surroundings; despite what the young man had said as to his objection to descriptions of scenery, Jimmy felt that when that young man came to read again that particular part he would feel with Jimmy that it would be a crime to let it go. There was, of course, one objection; on counting it laboriously, Jimmy discovered that it amounted to just over six hundred words.

Then he came to the big scene in the middle; the real incident of the thing--that "idea" that had taken the fancy of the editor. Not a word of that must be missed--for every word had its special value. But that was a matter--(again much laborious counting)--of just over five hundred words.

Then he tried cutting the thing up; slicing out a paragraph or two here, and a sheet or two there, and reading them after he had joined them carefully; but the real beauty of the thing, Jimmy felt, was gone. He went to bed with a headache; only to dream that the young man was tearing reams of valuable ma.n.u.script, while the boy William looked on with an exasperating smile.

The next evening Jimmy began to write the whole thing again; for Jimmy was learning his lesson. He got it down to something near the limit arranged in two nights; decided, on an impulse, to take it to the office himself; and was received somewhat coolly by the young man.

"We're pretty full up just now," said the young man, scratching his head dubiously, and looking down into the pipe that never seemed to be alight. "However, I'll have a go at it."

Jimmy went away, and waited a week. He dared not write anything else; this was to be a test of his efficiency. If he could please this man he would go ahead; there were prospects for him if this matter came out fortunately. At the end of the week he once more climbed the stairs and knocked at the door. The room seemed full of the editor and the pale boy and several other men; all, with the exception of the pale boy, smoking and laughing and talking.

The editor detached himself, and came across to Jimmy, evidently in a good temper. "Let's see," he said, with the remainder of a smile that had been the proper compliment to a story he had just heard still lingering about his lips--"didn't I write you?"

Jimmy murmured that he had not yet had a letter; he wondered if by any good chance it would ever happen that he would be on such terms of familiarity with the great one as was the gentleman with his hat on the back of his head who had just sat down in the editorial chair and taken one of the editorial cigarettes.

"Oh, it's all right," said the young man. "Not quite the idea--in the working out, you'll understand; you seemed to miss it a bit somehow. But I've made it sixteen s.h.i.+llings. You know the office; go there on Friday, and tell 'em who you are. I'll have the account pa.s.sed through."

Jimmy was staggering out at the door when the young man, who had darted back to his desk, came out after him, and called him. He whispered Jimmy on the staircase.

"Here's a couple of drawings--they haven't been used for a long time, and you might write up to 'em----"

"Write up to them?" asked Jimmy, in perplexity.

"Yes--yes," replied the other impatiently. "Make it a thousand words, so that we can s.p.a.ce it out well; and write naturally and lightly. I don't care what order you use 'em in, but write so that those will come in as ill.u.s.trations. Let me have it next week. And, by the way," he added hurriedly, "let the man's figure be the hero. Very necessary, that."

Jimmy discovered, on examining the drawings, that the figure of the man in one was that of a young gentleman with very broad shoulders and a very beautiful waist, apparently denouncing a lady upon a sofa; that of the gentleman in the other was heavily bearded, and was in the act of das.h.i.+ng forward to stop a runaway horse on which an altogether different young lady was being carried away at a great rate. Jimmy hesitated for a long time; but finally made it a matter of years between the first picture and the second, and so grew the beard naturally, while he exiled his hero for the purpose.

Jimmy became a frequent visitor to the office over which the young man presided, and a less frequent visitor to that other office where the s.h.i.+llings and occasional sovereigns were handed out to him. There was that to be said for the matter, at least; that the money was always forthcoming at the right time, if it had been earned; and a pretty starveling crew it was that waited about on Fridays--though a merry one nevertheless. Once or twice, too, it happened that something of Jimmy's that had not fitted the fancy of the young man was sent on its wanderings elsewhere, and fell into hands that detained it, and paid meagrely for it. So that Jimmy was becoming rich in a small way.

All this took time; I have been careful to say nothing of the quakings and the fevers of doubt and anxiety, the bitternesses and all the other little trifles that filled out a matter of two years; Jimmy forgot those pretty easily, because Jimmy was young, and Jimmy was fighting.

In proportion as that work took up his time the warehouse sunk into the background. For there were weeks when the money he earned at the warehouse was as nothing in proportion to what, for example, a novelette (at four ten) had brought him; other weeks when it loomed large, because he had earned nothing. So that it came about, after a time, that he came to be looked at a little askance in that busy house in the turning off Cheapside; was reprimanded once or twice for blunders and omissions; and with the remembrance of his secret income in his mind took but scant notice of what was said. Then, on the pretext of a change in the staff, Jimmy was sent for one day, and was astounded to find that his services were no longer required.

Astounded in a fas.h.i.+on, and yet not altogether displeased. A fleeting recollection of the man who had given him his first opportunity of making a start in life caused him to murmur the name of Mr. Baffall; but the man before whom he was arraigned shook his head, and smiled.

"Mr. Baffall was good enough to recommend you, Larrance, a long time ago; and we accepted that recommendation because he had had a good deal to do with the firm. But Mr. Baffall would be the last to expect us to keep on anybody we don't want. You're all right, Larrance--but you're not all right here. You dream too much; you're not smart enough. I think, for all our sakes, it would be better if you shook hands, and had a look round somewhere else. London's a big place--and I daresay you'll get on."