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Their Silver Wedding Journey, a novel by William Dean Howells |
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Part 1 - Chapter 17 |
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_ PART I CHAPTER XVII Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss Triscoe's prompting. He had not to wait long. "And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?" "Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public." "How could you tell that they were-taking?" "They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them." "And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?" "I don't believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn't think much of them; but he knows I can write shorthand, and put things into shape." "What things?" "Oh--ideas. He has a notion of trying to come forward in politics. He owns shares in everything but the United States Senate--gas, electricity, railroads, aldermen, newspapers--and now he would like some Senate. That's what I think." She did not quite understand, and she was far from knowing that this cynic humor expressed a deadlier pessimism than her father's fiercest accusals of the country. "How fascinating it is!" she said, innocently. "And I suppose they all envy your coming out?" "In the office?" "Yes. I should envy, them--staying." Burnamy laughed. "I don't believe they envy me. It won't be all roses for me--they know that. But they know that I can take care of myself if it isn't." He remembered something one of his friends in the office had said of the painful surprise the Bird of Prey would feel if he ever tried his beak on him in the belief that he was soft. She abruptly left the mere personal question. "And which would you rather write: poems or those kind of sketches?" "I don't know," said Burnamy, willing to talk of himself on any terms. "I suppose that prose is the thing for our time, rather more; but there are things you can't say in prose. I used to write a great deal of verse in college; but I didn't have much luck with editors till Mr. March took this little piece for 'Every Other Week'." "Little? I thought it was a long poem!" Burnamy laughed at the notion. "It's only eight lines." "Oh!" said the girl. "What is it about?" He yielded to the temptation with a weakness which he found incredible in a person of his make. "I can repeat it if you won't give me away to Mrs. March." "Oh, no indeed!" He said the lines over to her very simply and well. "They are beautiful--beautiful!" "Do you think so?" he gasped, in his joy at her praise. "Yes, lovely. Do you know, you are the first literary man--the only literary man--I ever talked with. They must go out--somewhere! Papa must meet them at his clubs. But I never do; and so I'm making the most of you." "You can't make too much of me, Miss Triscoe," said Burnamy. She would not mind his mocking. "That day you spoke about 'The Maiden Knight', don't you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that way. I didn't know you were an author then." "Well, I'm not much of an author now," he said, cynically, to retrieve his folly in repeating his poem to her. "Oh, that will do for you to say. But I know what Mrs. March thinks." He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; 'Every Other Week' was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs. March's interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know just how much she thought of him as a writer? "Did she like the poem." Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about the poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs. March's liking for Burnamy. "But it wouldn't do to tell you all she said!" This was not what he hoped, but he was richly content when she returned to his personal history. "And you didn't know any one when, you went up to Chicago from--" "Tippecanoe? Not exactly that. I wasn't acquainted with any one in the office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing to let me try my hand. That was all I could ask." "Of course! You knew you could do the rest. Well, it is like a romance. A woman couldn't have such an adventure as that!" sighed the girl. "But women do!" Burnamy retorted. "There is a girl writing on the paper now--she's going to do the literary notices while I'm gone--who came to Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who's made her way single-handed from interviewing up." "Oh," said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm. "Is she nice?" "She's mighty clever, and she's nice enough, too, though the kind of journalism that women do isn't the most dignified. And she's one of the best girls I know, with lots of sense." "It must be very interesting," said Miss Triscoe, with little interest in the way she said it. "I suppose you're quite a little community by yourselves." "On the paper?" "Yes." "Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don't. There's quite a regiment of people on a big paper. If you'd like to come out," Burnamy ventured, "perhaps you could get the Woman's Page to do." "What's that?" "Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette." He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, "Do women write it?" He laughed reminiscently. "Well, not always. We had one man who used to do it beautifully--when he was sober. The department hasn't had any permanent head since." He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no doubt she had not taken it in fully. She abruptly left the subject. "Do you know what time we really get in to-morrow?" "About one, I believe--there's a consensus of stewards to that effect, anyway." After a pause he asked, "Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?" "We are going to Dresden, first, I believe. Then we may go on down to Vienna. But nothing is settled, yet." "Are you going direct to Dresden?" "I don't know. We may stay in Hamburg a day or two." "I've got to go straight to Carlsbad. There's a sleeping-car that will get me there by morning: Mr. Stoller likes zeal. But I hope you'll let me be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow." "You're very kind. You've been very good already--to papa." He protested that he had not been at all good. "But he's used to taking care of himself on the other side. Oh, it's this side, now!" "So it is! How strange that seems! It's actually Europe. But as long as we're at sea, we can't realize it. Don't you hate to have experiences slip through your fingers?" "I don't know. A girl doesn't have many experiences of her own; they're always other people's." This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth. He only suggested, "Well; sometimes they make other people have the experiences." Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left the question. "Do you understand German?" "A little. I studied it at college, and I've cultivated a sort of beer-garden German in Chicago. I can ask for things." "I can't, except in French, and that's worse than English, in Germany, I hear." "Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment. Will you?" She did not answer. "It must be rather late, isn't it?" she asked. He let her see his watch, and she said, "Yes, it's very late," and led the way within. "I must look after my packing; papa's always so prompt, and I must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left home; we expect to get one in Dresden. Good-night!" Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense of novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the first young lady he had known who had a maid. The fact awed him; Miss Triscoe herself did not awe him so much. _ |
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