International Short Stories: American Part 20

"No," said the salesman. "We have only the window copy, and we've had that over a month. I can get them for you, however."

"All right," said Van Buren. "Just send them to Charles H. Harney, The Helicon Club, New York. I'll pay for them now."

Van Buren paid his bill, and, returning to the street, hailed a hansom.

"Take me to some good book-shop," he said to the cabby.

Instanter he was whirled around into Winter Street, where stands one of Boston's most famous literary distributing centers.

"Have you 'The City of Credit'?" he asked the salesman.

"I think we have a copy in stock," replied the latter. "If we haven't, we can get it for you."

"Do so, please," said Van Buren. "I want a dozen copies--send them by express to Charles H. Harney, The Helicon Club, New York. How much?"

"It's a dollar and a half book, I think," said the clerk. "The discount will make it $1.20--a dozen, did you say? Twenty-five cents expressage--that will make it $14.65."

Van Buren paid up without a whimper. Once in the hansom again, he called up through the little hole in the top.

"Isn't there any other book-shop in town where I can get what I want?"

he demanded.

"There's a dozen of 'em," replied the cabby.

"Then go to them all," said Van Buren.

That night when Van Buren started for New York he had purchased a hundred and fifty copies of "The City of Credit," and had ordered them all to be addressed to the clerk at the Helicon Club, with whom, upon his arrival in town, he arranged for their immediate res.h.i.+pment to the Harrison Safety Deposit Storage Company on Forty-second Street.

"I'm going to have my happiness, if I have to buy it," Van Buren muttered doggedly, as he crept into bed shortly after midnight. And then, tossing sleeplessly in his bed and at last rejoicing in the possession of his late father's millions to back him in his enterprise, he laid the foundations of a plan comparable only to that of the Wheat King who corners the market, or the man of Cotton who loads himself up with more bales of that useful commodity than all the fertile acres of the South could raise in seven seasons. Orders were despatched by wire and by mail to all the booksellers in the land whose names and addresses Van Buren could get hold of. Department stores were put under contribution and their stock commandeered, and one of the biggest booms in the whole history of literature set in.

"The City of Credit" went into its second, fifth, twentieth, fiftieth large edition. Hutchins & Waterbury wrote Van Buren stating that a sudden turn in the market had made his book one of the six best sellers not only of this century but of all centuries. Their presses were seething to the point of white heat with the copies of "The City of Credit" needed to supply the demand; their binders were working day and night with a double force, and their s.h.i.+pping department was pretty nearly swamped with the strain put upon it. "Your royalty check on January 1st will be the fattest in the land," wrote Waterbury in a moment of enthusiasm. "We are thinking of sending our staff of readers to the lunatic asylum and getting an entirely new set. An order for four thousand has come in from Chicago this morning. St. Louis wants fifteen hundred, and pretty nearly every other able-bodied town in the country is asking for from one to one hundred and fifty." By Christmas time, if the publishers' announcements were to be believed, "The City of Credit" had attained to the enormous sale of three hundred and fifty thousand, and Van Buren was in receipt of a letter from a literary periodical asking for his photograph for publication in its February issue. This brought him a realization of the fact that he might now fairly claim to be considered a literary success. At any rate, he felt that he had now a right to approach Miss Tooker with a fair prospect of receiving from her a favorable answer to the question which she had a year before left an open one.

And events showed that his feeling was justified, for two days later he enjoyed the blissful sensation of finding himself the accepted lover of the woman he had tried so hard to please.

"Is it to be--yes?" he whispered, as they sat together in the conservatory of her father's city house.

"It has--always been--yes," she replied softly, and then what happened is not for your eyes or mine. Suffice it to say that Van Buren moved immediately from sordid old New York to become a dweller in the higher alt.i.tudes of Elysium.

Incidentally the boom in "The City of Credit" stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun. There was n.o.body apparently who felt called upon to throw in the necessary number of dollars to sustain an already over-stimulated market, which puzzled Messrs. Hutchins & Waterbury exceedingly. They had hoped to live for the balance of their days upon the profits of their World's Best Seller.

IV

As the spring approached and the day set for Miss Tooker's wedding to Van Buren came nearer, the latter found himself daily becoming more and more a prey to conscience. There was a decidedly large fly in the amber of his happiness, for as he viewed the part he had played in the forced success of "The City of Credit" he began to see it in its true light. The first of March brought him his royalty check from Hutchins & Waterbury, and it was, as had been predicted, gratifyingly large, and reduced materially what he had called his "campaign expenses." In the same mail, however, was a bill from the Storage Company, in one of whose s.p.a.cious chambers there reposed more copies of his novel than he liked to think of--over 250,000--the actual sales had been 260,000 in spite of the published announcements of a higher figure. The firm had thirty or forty thousand on hand, printed in a moment of confident enthusiasm when the flurry was at its height. Both communications brought before Van Buren's mind's eye all too vividly the specter of his duplicity, and he was too much of a man of conscience to be able to put it lightly aside. He tried to console himself with the idea that all is fair in love and war, but he could not, and his remorse caused him many a sleepless night. Finally--it was on the eve of the posting of the wedding invitations--scruple overcame him, and he resolved that he could not honestly lead his bride to the altar with such a record of deceit upon his escutcheon, especially in view of the fact that it was through this deceit that his happiness had been won.

"It is better to lose her before the ceremony than after it," he told himself, and, bitter though the confidence might be, he made up his mind to tell Miss Tooker everything. "Only, I must break it gently,"

he observed.

With this difficult errand in mind, he called upon his fiancee, and, after the usual greeting, he started in on his confession. He had hardly begun it, however, when his courage failed him, and with the oozing of that his words failed him also. He did have the courage, however, to seek to reveal the exact situation in another way.

"Ethel dear," he said, awkwardly fumbling his gloves, "I want to show you something. I have a--a little surprise for you."

The girl eyed him narrowly.

"For me?" she said.

"Yes," he answered. "The fact is, it's--it's a sort of wedding present I have for you, and I think you ought to see it before--well, _now_.

Will you go?"

Miss Tooker was interested at once, and, taking a hansom, they were driven to the Harrison Storage Warehouse on Forty-second Street Arrived there, Van Buren led her to the elevator and thence up to the small room in which lay the corroding and tell-tale packages--an enormous bulk--that were slowly but surely eating up his happiness.

"Why, Harry!" she cried as she gazed in bewilderment at the huge pile of unopened bundles. "Are these all for me?"

"Yes," gulped Van Buren, his face flaming.

"But--what do they contain?" she asked.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand copies of my--my book--'The City of Credit,'" said Van Buren, his eyes cast down.

"You mean that you--" she began.

"Yes, it's exactly that, Ethel. I--I bought 'em all to--well, to boom the sales and to--make a name for myself in the world," he said sheepishly, "or rather for you--but I suppose now that you know---"

"Then all this tremendous sale was arranged between you and your publishers to deceive me?" she asked.

"Not at all," protested the unhappy Van Buren. "On the contrary, I did it all myself. Hutchins & Waterbury don't know any more about it than you did an hour ago. No one knows--except you and I."

Van Buren paused.

"I could not let you marry me without knowing what I had done," he said. "It would not be fair to--to our future."

"Tell me all about it," she said quietly, and Van Buren made his confession complete. He told her of his interview with Waterbury--how the latter had told him his book had fallen flat; how it was "up to him" to do something; how a sight of a single copy of "The City of Credit" in the Tremont Street shop window had tempted him first into a retail fall which had grown ultimately into a wholesale "crime"--as he put it. He did not spare himself in the least degree, humiliating as the narration of his story was to him.

"I suppose it is all up with me now," he said ruefully, when he had finished.

"I don't know," said Ethel quietly. "I don't know, Harry. Perhaps.

Take me home, please. I want to show you something."

The drive back to the Tooker mansion was taken in silence. Van Buren despised himself too strongly to be able to speak, and Miss Tooker had fallen into a deep reverie which the poor fellow at her side feared meant irrevocable ruin to his hopes.

"Come in," said Miss Tooker gravely, as the cab drew up at the house.

"I want to take you up into our attic storeroom, and then ask you a plain question, Harry, and then I want you to answer that question simply and truthfully."

Marveling much, Van Buren permitted himself to be led to the topmost floor of Miss Tooker's house.

"Look in there," said she, opening the door of the storeroom. "Do you see those packages?"

"Yes," he said. "They look very much like mine, only they're fewer."