The Author of "Trixie"/Chapter 4
It now became the wretched Dunkle's business to make two typed copies of the Archdeacon's manuscript, one for submission to some publisher, the other for his own reference, and this he proceeded to do. As we have seen, the story bulked a hundred and fifty thousand words. Dunkle was no virtuoso upon the keys of his Remington. The stuff, moreover, that he was required to copy was, in his opinion, so revolting that it was as much as he could do to hold himself two hours daily at his task. But, averaging 1,500 words a day, he got the thing done in a little over three months. During this period he was again and again on the point of throwing up the whole enterprise, but the completed manuscript proved, at last, the staunchness of his love for Chloë.
The Archdeacon, who hadn't a scrap of confidence in Dunkle, had insisted that his manuscript should be brought back to him, so soon as the work of copying it should have been completed. "For," he told Dunkle, "unless I am allowed with my own hands to put that bundle of papers on the fire, I shall never know when you won't be turning up to blackmail me. Only if I have seen, with my own eyes, the flames consume my manuscript, only then shall I be able to bid you defiance."
Dunkle had conceded the point. He had no wish to betray this man who was going to become his father-in-law. He believed that the book might possibly enjoy a certain vogue, but he trusted that it would quickly be forgotten. To stir up talk about the thing, by accusing the Archdeacon of having written it, was what he never expected to be anxious to do. Let it come out and then let oblivion snatch it—that was his desire.
No sooner, therefore, was his typescript finished than he carried the manuscript round to the Vicarage and delivered it up to its author, who lost no time in reducing it, with Dunkle's enthusiastic aid, to a heap of ashes. From this burning Dunkle derived great pleasure. "If only," he thought, "we could have done this three months ago! But then," he reflected, "I should not be going to marry Chloë next Wednesday."
Yes, the wedding was as near as that; for all this time the preparations had been going on busily. A studio apartment had been found in Chelsea; the five hundred pounds' worth of furniture had been bought and charged to the Archdeacon and installed; the bride's clothes had all come home; the banns had been put up; the presents had been received; the invitations had been issued; the Press and the police had been notified—in short, there was nothing more for Chloë and Dunkle to do but to get married. So married they got.
The only cloud on the brightness of the occasion was the appalling lumbago which kept the bride's father in bed and from which he was miraculously delivered that same evening.
There was no honeymoon. None of that kind of soupy nonsense for Chloë and Dunkle. They were married, went back to the Vicarage, drank a glass of champagne or two and then cabbed it home to the studio, where Chloë had a model waiting for her. Did I tell you that Chloë painted? I don't believe I did. Hitherto she had only done it fitfully, but now that she was married she intended to make it her job in life. It is essential for a married woman to have an occupation; otherwise she tends to become the slave of her home. Chloë had no intention of turning into an unsalaried cook-parlourmaid.
So as soon as they were under their own roof the bride set to work upon her model, a youngish but excessively ugly and angular Scotch woman called Mrs. Mackay, who was at the moment enjoying a considerable vogue. Chloë posed her on all fours. We needn't linger in the studio. Let us accompany Dunkle to Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.
Only that morning the poet had received from Messrs. Capper and Ironsides the following letter:
102, Henrietta Street,
Covent Garden.Dear Sir,
We beg to inform you that we have now carefully considered the MS. which you have submitted to us, and are pleased to be able to inform you that we shall be pleased to publish it at an early date. We shall esteem it a favour if you will favour us with a call at an early date, when we shall be pleased to discuss terms, etcetera.
Yours faithfully,
Capper and Ironsides.Bisham Dunkle, Esq.
Dunkle had accordingly made an appointment by telephone for the same afternoon.
It was in no very happy frame of mind, I can assure you, that he travelled eastwards. Always throughout the execrable labours of the past three months he had been to some extent sustained by the faint hope that the Archdeacon's story might, after all, not find a market. This hope had never quite died within him until to-day. Now it was dead. If the very first firm of publishers who had seen "Trixie" had bitten, it was quite evident that the book was sellable. When he had told the Archdeacon that it was likely to please the publishers he had been dismally right. And here he was, within ten days of completing the typescript, on his way to negotiate terms with Capper's.
"Perhaps," he said between his teeth, "if I ask the earth it'll put them off; but whether it does or not, the earth is what I'm going to ask. If I'm to destroy my reputation, I'll see that I don't do it for nothing."
So he demanded from Messrs. Capper and Ironsides a five hundred pounds advance and a royalty of twenty per cent., rising to thirty.
To his horror Mr Indermaur, the junior partner who interviewed him, agreed with the utmost alacrity to these monstrous figures.
"I won't conceal from you, Mr. Dunkle," he said, as with eager pen he filled up the blanks in a printed form of agreement, "that we entertain the very highest hopes of your novel. 'Trixie' is, in our estimation, a Winner. A Winner, Mr. Dunkle."
Dunkle paled. "Don't say that," he groaned. "For Heaven's sake don't say that. Not a Winner."
"Yes, Mr. Dunkle, a Winner; if not," Mr. Indermaur paused impressively, "a Best Seller, though that, of course, I cannot promise."
"Don't!" said Dunkle. "Please don't!"
"I see," said Mr. Indermaur, "that you're superstitious, Mr. Dunkle. It makes you uneasy to hear me prophesying success for 'Trixie.' Well, I'll say no more now; but two months hence we shall see. Yes, Mr. Dunkle, we shall see. Here is the contract. If you'll look it through now and sign it, time will be saved. The sooner you give us the right to begin, the better we shall be pleased."
Dunkle signed the contract. He was too heavily dispirited even to read it. Soon afterwards he shambled out of Mr. Indermaur's presence, with the air of a man who leaves the dock after being sentenced to five years' penal servitude, and made his way to the Bards' Club, where he spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Absalom cocktails. So profound was his depression that not until he had swallowed fifteen of these potions could he summon up sufficient energy to go home.
These had been the last words of Mr. Indermaur to Dunkle: "I shall send out our first paragraph this afternoon."
Dunkle, therefore, knew that in all probability the announcement that he had written a novel, which Messrs. Capper and Ironsides were to produce, would be in several of the next morning's journals.
He had not consumed too many cocktails to understand that Chloë must on no account be left to make her own discovery of this matter. To allow the shock to catch her unprepared would be sheerly barbarous; and who could say how she might react to it, what wild thing she might do in her despair at being given to understand that she was the wife of a novelist? He resolved to break it to her gently.
He found her washing her brushes at the hand-basin in the bath-room, for she was still a sufficiently young painter in-oils to tackle this tiresome duty the moment she had finished work for the day.
"Hallo, old jug," he began "Here you are then! I say, I've got some rather glorious news for you, you know. The fact is I've just extorted five hundred for a book from a publisher. How does that go down? Eh, how?"
"I don't believe it," said his wife simply.
"You don't, eh? Well then, there's the contract. Smell it." He thrust it against her nose.
She snatched it from him and, holding it between her soap-and-painty fingers, ran her eye over the first clause.
"'The work at present entitled "Trixie"'" she read aloud. "What work is that, Bisham? You don't mean to say you've been writing a narrative poem called 'Trixie'; because, if so, I can't bear it, and I shall scream and bite great pieces out of the furniture."
"Oh, no," he said, "make your mind easy. It's not a narrative poem. The fact is—" he spoke as casually as he could—"it's a novel, Chloë; a prose fiction, you know. Capper and Ironsides are going to do it at once. They've given me five hundred on account and a twenty per cent. royalty, rising to thirty. They're tremendously bucked with the book. They say it's bound to go. Suppose it makes our fortune, eh? What about that? Eh, what about it?" He tailed off. He knew that he was talking unworthiness.
"Why, precisely, did you do this, Bisham?" she asked. She seemed to be quite calm, but she had stopped washing her brushes and her eyes were slowly waxing.
"I, did it for your sake entirely," she said. "I want you to have a setting that is worthy of you, not this rotten studio. A thousand a year can't begin to provide you with your proper setting. A girl like you requires a setting that nothing under seven thousand a year can provide. You ought to have a limousine and a tiara and lots of stunning clothes and a big house to entertain in, with a conservatory and palms. I can never hope to do anything like that for you out of poetry. The money's in fiction nowadays. Why shouldn't we get hold of some of it?" He hung his head. It was awful to hear his own lips saying such things.
"Before I pack up and return to father's," she said, still quite calmly (and how he loved her for those words!), "let me implore you, Bisham, for your own sake—not mine—to change the name of this book. You call it 'Trixie.' Well, if I were to write a mordant burlesque of the hogwashiest kind of sloppy feuilleton, I should have to call it 'Trixie.' You cannot"
He was inspired. He saw salvation.
"But, my dear old cork, "he cried, "don't you understand that that's exactly what I have done?"
"What is?"
"Why, made a burlesque. I tell you the book's a scream. You'll love it. But the really shrieking part of the whole jolly business is that Cappers think it's a serious effort. They take it to be a great sentimental story. That's why they want it so badly. Do you imagine they'd give sixpence for it if they thought it was a burlesque."
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "Are you lying, Bish? "she asked.
"Lying? Lord, no! Do you think I'd lie to you on our wedding-day? I tell you the book's the wildest kind of a burlesque. If you don't believe me, let me read you some of it. I have a copy here; it's in my trunk. I'll get it." He darted out of the studio.
The last thing Chloë wanted to do was to go back to the Vicarage. She had, indeed, no faintest intention of doing so. Her mention of her father's home had been purely rhetorical. She took the sofa and lit a cigarette.
Dunkle returned with the typescript of "Trixie." He sat down and began to read from it. This man was fighting for his life's happiness, you understand, and he was on his mettle. He adopted an exaggerated style of delivery which made what the good Archdeacon had written sound inimitably droll. Chloë, who wished for nothing so much as to be convinced, quickly began to laugh, and soon was helpless. Dunkle, his apprehensions all yed, now proceeded to find himself amusing. He, too, began to laugh. Presently it became impossible for him to continue. He abandoned his relieved soul to an ecstasy of merriment. The two young people rolled about, gasping and holding their sides. If the Archdeacon could have seen them he would certainly have perished of mortification.
Chloë was the first to regain self-control. "Oh, Bish," she cried, "but it's colossal. It's elephantine. It's cosmic. I believe you're a genius, after all. Wow, wow, how I ache! And to think that Cappers take it seriously. Do you suppose the reviewers will? Won't it be rather too pricelessly peerless if they do, Bish? But I'm afraid that's rather too absolutely much to hope for altogether."
She was wholly reassured. Dunkle could hardly believe his ears, but he had to. There was no doubt about it. He had pulled it off. What had threatened to be his Waterloo had been converted, as by a miracle, into his Omdurman.
"Now," he thought, "if I can only kid the rest of the illuminati that the book's a jape, I'm saved. But can I? Well, well; sufficient unto the day. The thought to freeze on to just now is that Chloë's lapped it up."
"How about din-din?" he inquired. "It's getting on for seven. Suppose we dress and feed at the Café Royal. Those five hundred quid were made to be spent, you know."
So they got rid of five of them on a buck dinner and then danced till morning at Johnny's Club.