"Why, a year ago," grumbled Perner, "my quatrains used to be legal tender anywhere on Park Row for a dollar. Now they want to charge me advertising rates to print them."
"Same with pictures," echoed Van Dorn. "My opinion is that a lot of us will be back plowing corn next spring."
"It"s a good while till spring," reflected Livingstone, gloomily. He was working on his painting a good deal these days, and perhaps getting truer feelings into it because of his own despair.
Barrifield came in at this juncture, filled with the usual enthusiasm.
He had learned of a man who was thought to be anxious to invest in just such an enterprise as the "Whole Family." He was going to see him in the morning--he would almost certainly come to the rescue. They were discussing this possibility when Colonel Hazard entered. For the first time he looked worn and discouraged.
"What"s the matter, Colonel?" asked Perner. "You look tired."
"Yes," a.s.sented the Colonel; "the landlady"s been in again after the rent. The landlord was there, too, this afternoon. I think I"ve paid it in kind words and kisses about as long as I can. They said we"d either have to pay or give up the rooms."
This statement cast a momentary gloom even over Barrifield.
"And Bates," continued the Colonel, "has been in, too. He came to notify me that he would quit to-night unless he got his money for last week. We didn"t pay him last week, you know. I should very promptly have told him to quit had I felt authorized to do so."
"No, no; don"t do that!" protested Barrifield, anxiously. "Tell him to wait till to-morrow. Tell him"--he hesitated a moment, and then added in all seriousness, "tell him we"ll raise his salary."
XIX
A LETTER FROM MR. TRUMAN LIVINGSTONE OF NEW YORK TO MISS DOROTHY CASTLE OF CLEVELAND
NEW YORK, December 28, 1897.
DEAR, DEAR DORRY: Well, Dorry, it"s all over. All our hopes and dreams have come to nothing. Perny pulled down the sign in the hall this morning, and the furniture is being taken out of the rooms below to sell for whatever it will bring to pay as far as it will go on the rent. Perny said he wouldn"t go into a new year with this hanging over us, nor Van Dorn, either, and I think it"s just as well myself.
"You see, Dorry, it would be no use. Our plan looked well, but it was all wrong; and even if it hadn"t been, it would have taken more money than we could ever have got hold of, and a long, long time besides, to get started. Of course, Frisby did it without money, but that was a good while ago, and he was first in the field. It is like a prize drawn in a lottery--the chances are against another being won by anything near the same ticket number. And then, even Frisby may not have done exactly as he said--people don"t always tell things of this kind just as they happened.
"Barrifield still hopes against hope that sometime he may find some one with capital who will bring the "Whole Family"
to life. He has taken the lists and books and things away to show to such people; but I think it would be better if he did not show them, for they could not seem much of an inducement to any one with money already made and safely locked in the bank. The Colonel has gone, too, and Bates, and the last is the one bright spot in all this sad affair.
He went some weeks before the Colonel-- I believe I wrote you at the time. Bates was a great trial to us all--a greater trial even than I ever told you, for though I did not speak of it before, he drank to excess, and we also know now that he was unreliable in many ways. On all the advertising he placed for us he received a commission, while from the advertising he obtained for us we received no returns, for it was all taken on trial, or in some such way, and he had no contracts at all except the one of two dollars I once mentioned. That was genuine, and we got the two dollars.
"We thought, Dorry, with all of us together, we had a good combination of people for starting a paper, but I realize now that we probably had about the worst one that could be imagined. Artists and writers can make a good paper, and the "Whole Family" was not bad, as papers go, but it takes somebody else to run it, and even Perny"s ten years"
business experience was worse than nothing after being mixed with about as many more years of bohemia. He says so himself now. The Colonel was as bad as the rest of us--worse, because he is older, and with him the habit of getting rich on paper has had time to grow and become fixed. He will go on chasing rainbows, I suppose, until the end of his days.
Poor old chap! When I shut my eyes I can imagine him in his frayed clothes, with his white hair and his eager face, racing madly across rain-wet meadows for the imaginary pot of gold. That is what we have all been doing, Dorry, and had our combination been ever so strong and our feet ever so swift, we never should have found it.
"For I realize a great many things now that none of us realized at the start. The cost of producing a paper is very great, and there were many things that we did not know of at all. Perny knows all about it now, and has figured it out for me and Van, so that we see clearly at last that no matter how much money we had started with, or how capable we were, we should only have failed, for, unless we changed our plans and charged higher for the paper and gave less premiums, the more subscribers we got the more we should have lost. It is some consolation to know that, for we might have lost a hundred thousand dollars very easily in a year if we had had it, or had raised it by subscription, as we tried to do. Your little thousand would have been but a drop in the ocean, and would have lasted only a few days. So I send back the draft to you, now that everything is ended and you cannot refuse to take it. As for my part of the a.s.sessments, I managed to keep up and a little more, for I was still in favor of going on when the others had reached the limit of their means.
"And now comes the hardest part of all. For oh, Dorry dear, I am going to do what I once said I would do if anything happened to me, or if the paper failed and ruined us all. I am going to release you. I could not think, Dorry, after all that has pa.s.sed, of letting you come here now to share my poverty. For that is what it is, dear--just poverty; and poverty in a big city is more humiliating and deadening to all the joys of life than it can possibly be elsewhere. I have nothing now but my hands, Dorry, and they are of little value, for times have changed and there is much less work than formerly. I have less even than that, because there are some debts that have acc.u.mulated and must be paid.
"I never realized what riches were until I had them,--I mean until I thought I had them, which was the same thing while it lasted,--nor what poverty meant. And Perny says so, too, and Van. Barry, of course, still has his salary. But I realize now, and I am not going to let you leave comfort and plenty, without care, to come here and share only privation and care, without comfort, with me. It breaks my heart to give you up, Dorry, but I know it is right, and while you might still be willing, if I asked it, to fulfil your promise to me, and do not realize all that it would mean, I cannot ask you--I cannot allow you--to do it.
"Some day, Dorry, things may be different again. Some day, if we both live and you are still free, and still care, I may come to you and ask you to give me back your promise.
For you are free now, Dorry. I would be less than I am if I did not give you your freedom now, after holding out to you all the promises of wealth, and leading you to believe in all my vain dreams. How beautiful you were through it all!
You only thought of others. Dear heart, what will the poor poets and artists do now without the beautiful place you were going to build for them? I suppose they must always be poor dreamers like me to the end, and it is that poverty and that end, darling, that I cannot ask you to share.
"Good-by, Dorry. We have been friends from childhood, and friends we must still, be, for, whatever comes, I am always
"Your faithful "TRUE."
"P.S. I believe I wrote you that your Christmas remembrance came. I thank you for it once more. It is very beautiful. I thought you might care for the book because it is an autograph copy. I must not forget to wish you a happy and beautiful New Year. It will be different from what we had planned--different from the year just pa.s.sed, which, I suppose, has been happy, too, though I would not, for some reasons, wish to repeat it. I forgot to tell you about my picture. I am only waiting for a cold sleet to come, so I can finish it. I had intended it, you know, for Perny"s Christmas, to hang over his desk in the new house; but there is no new house, and he would not let me give it to him now, so I shall try to sell it.
"TRUE."
XX
THE BARK OF THE WOLF
In the studios near Union Square, where two artists and a writer lived and toiled together, there was an atmosphere of heavy gloom. It was a bitter, dark day without, for one thing, raw and windy, while within there was little in the way of cheerfulness besides the open fire, which, for economy"s sake, was not allowed to manifest any undue spirit of enterprise. Being the last day in the year--a year that had not been overkind to them--also added something to the feeling of pervading melancholy, and the fact that no one of the three had eaten since the previous evening was not conducive to joy.
They were not altogether without hope. They had tobacco, such as it was, and coal for the time being. Food was more or less of a luxury compared with these. They had sc.r.a.ped together their last fractional funds and invested them in necessaries. Then, too, there was to be more money; not much, of course,--there was not much money anywhere now,--but enough to satisfy for a time the gaunt wolf that was marching up and down in the hall outside, pausing now and then to grin up at the spot where the sign of the "Whole Family" had hung, and show his gleaming white teeth. It was Van Dorn who had pictured the situation in this manner, and added:
"I"m afraid to go out in the hall after dark, for fear he"ll get me by the leg."
And Perner:
"I think we"d better invite him in. Maybe he"s brought something."
Livingstone looked wearily in the fire.
"I wish the "Decade" would send me that check they promised to-day," he muttered presently.
"And "Dawn" the one they were to send me," said Van Dorn.
"And the "Columbian" mine," echoed Perner. "If I thought I could get it now by going over there, I"d go."
"Too late, Perny; they"re closed. You should have got it when you were there yesterday."
"Yes, I know; but I thought some of us would surely get one, and I didn"t want to appear broke. I suppose, if they"d mentioned it, I"d have been fool enough to have said, "No hurry--any time-- I don"t need it.""
Van Dorn regarded Perner gravely.
"Perny," he said severely, "it is my opinion that you did say those very words. Were you, or were you not, offered a check yesterday in the "Columbian" office?"
"I _were not_! Though I believe there was some mention of having it made out if I wished it, and--"
"And you told them that any time next week, or next month, or next year would do! Let in the wolf, Stony; we"re betrayed."
"Well," said Perner, "it"ll be next year before it"s next week, anyway."