"My dear boy, you help me. You are a constant encouragement. Ah, you are a double encouragement, for you encourage them." He pointed downward.
"And that is the greatest good you could do me."
They talked a long time about the book, the sure winner, and as Milford was taking his leave, the Professor followed him to the head of the stairway. "My dear boy," he said, putting his hand on his visitor"s shoulder, "you must at last perceive that I am earnest."
"I know it."
"I hope you believe so, for I am. I may be odd--I may be amusing to the thoughtless, but to the wise I am serious."
And it was thus, during all the cold months of his work, pleading to his friends to construe him seriously. Sometimes he would check his enthusiasm, fearful that his dancing spirits might make him appear grotesque. But the neighbors, among their rattling milk-cans, laughed at him, his walk, his gestures, the tones of his voice. One morning near the end of March, he got on the train, a precious bundle hugged under his arm. He had spent half the night with Milford, and had come away strengthened by the strong man. Now he flew toward the journey-end of hope. A brakeman on the milk train had heard the farmers laugh at him, and felt at liberty to poke fun at him.
"Got your crop under your arm?" he asked.
The Professor bristled. "If it were the straw of wild oats three times threshed, it would still hold more value than the chaff that blows about in your empty skull. Keep your place, which means--distance."
He was serious; he felt it and gloated over it with a solemn pride. But before the train reached the city he begged the fellow"s pardon. "I am worn out with hard work," he said, "and I hope you will forget my harshness."
Cabmen bellowed at him as he pa.s.sed out of the station, and ragged boys guyed him as he walked along the street. He had a list of the subscription book publishers, and decided to submit his favor to the nearest one. The elevator boy put him off on the wrong floor. A scrub-woman looked up and leered at him. "Poverty, like anger, hath a privilege," he mused. He found the publisher"s quarters, but waited a long time before he was admitted to the presence of the manager. The great man was closeted with a book agent. In the subscription book house the author is nothing; the agent everything. The manager has been an agent, or perhaps a "fake" advertising man. He hates an author; he hated the Professor at sight, and flouted when he learned that the scholar had brought a book. What an insult! The idea of bringing a book to a publishing house! The Professor attempted to explain the scope of his work. The manager drew back. "No need to unwrap it," he said. "We"ve got more books now than we can sell. Say," he bawled, to some one outside his den, "tell Ritson I want to see him before he goes."
"I thought," began the Professor, bowing;--but the manager shut him off.
"We do our own thinking," he said.
"Well, sir, I shall bid you good-morning."
"Yes. Say," he shouted, "tell Bruck I want to see him, too."
The list was followed, and a night of sorrow fell at the end of a heart-breaking day. Not in all instances had the publishers been gruff; some had spoken kindly, one had looked at the ma.n.u.script, and then had shown the Professor a bank of books written on the same line. At last, worn out with serving as pall-bearer to his own dead spirit, he offered the book for enough money to pay his life insurance. The publisher shook his head. Old, old story, gathering mold.
CHAPTER XXVII.
WARMER THAN THE WORLD.
A bl.u.s.ter of warm wind brought a thaw, and the ice in the lake was breaking--a disjointing time, a cracking of winter"s old bones, a time when being alone we feel less lonely than in a noisy company. At night Milford sat musing in the kitchen. The outer door stood open, and he heard the cattle tramping about in the mushy barnyard. The hired man and his wife were singing a lonesome song in the sitting-room. There came another tramping, not of cattle, but of one more weary, of a man, the Professor. He trod into the light that fell from the door, and Milford bounded up to meet him, but fell back in reverence of his grief-stricken face. For a time the old man did not speak. He dropped his bundle, once so precious, but now a sapless husk, laid his walking-stick across it, took hold of a chair, and let himself slowly down with a groan.
"We are going to have rain," he said, attempting to smile, and unb.u.t.toning his old coat with a palsied fumble.
"Yes, I think so. The clouds have been tumbling about all day."
"A weird song they are singing in there."
"The love song of the ignorant and the poor," said Milford.
"The poor and the wise would not have written it," the Professor replied.
"Shall I tell them to stop?" Milford asked.
"Oh, no, poor crickets. Bring some cider, my boy. Let us live for a time in recollection only. I will not take too much."
"You may take as much as you like. It is time to drink."
"Yes, to drink or to rave."
Milford brought a jug of cider. "The devil"s sympathy," said the old man, drinking. "More, give me more--promises heaven, but slippers the foot that treads its way to h.e.l.l. But I will not take too much. Did I tell you that I had lost my place at the mill?"
"No, you didn"t say anything about it."
"I was discharged the evening before I went to town, but it made no impression on me then."
"Well, don"t let it make any now. Everything will come all right."
"Yes, it will. I have walked with many an experiment, but at last there is such a thing as facing a certainty."
"Have you anything in view?"
"Oh, yes. And everything will be all right."
"I hope so."
"I don"t hope--I know. But enough of that. It is a philosopher who can say, "Ha! old Socrates, pa.s.s your cup this way." They have hushed their song. Even the poor and the ignorant grow weary of singing; then who can expect music from the wise? What have you there? Old Whittier? He died, and they gave him a stingy column in the newspapers, squeezed by the report of the prize fight at New Orleans. If a poet would look to his fame, let him die when there is no other news. But some have died in a spread of newspaper glory--Eugene Field, the sweetest lisper of a boy"s mischief, the tuner of tenderest lyrics, but with a laugh for man that cut like a scythe. And some of the rich whom he had laughed at, scrambled for a place at his coffin to bear it to the grave--tuneless clay, scuffling over tuneful dust! Oh, hypocrisy, stamp thy countenance with a dollar!"
"It"s raining now," said Milford, seeking to draw his mind from the darkness of its wandering.
"Yes, the falling of water, rhythmic, poetry--all poets have been as water. I will cla.s.s them for you. Keats, the rivulet; Sh.e.l.ley, the brook; Byron, the creek; Tennyson, the river; Wordsworth, the lake; Milton, the bay; and Shakespeare, the waters of all the world, the sea.
But I will not keep you up. You are a working-man, and must rest."
"Don"t go; I"m not tired; I haven"t done a thing to-day. Shall I fill the jug?"
"No, enough. Let me take up my gilded trash," he said, reaching for his bundle.
"I wish you"d stay longer. Let me go home with you."
"No, I prefer to walk alone. You remember in the old reader, the dog went out to walk alone."
"It was the cat that walked alone," said Milford. "The dog sat down to gnaw his bone. Don"t you recollect?"
The old man touched his forehead, and shook his head. "So it was the cat that walked alone. But we will reverse it. The dog will walk alone to-night."
"I wish you"d let me go with you."
"Plead not your friendship, or I shall yield. But I want to be alone."
"Then you shall be."
"I thank you, and good-night." He strode off, with his bundle and stick; and out in the darkness he cried: "Don"t forget my cla.s.sification of the poets. Wordsworth! Wordsworth! And so, good-night."