University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
A SAD FAIRY AND A COMFORTING BROWNIE.

This thought of a flight to the unknown and almost unimaginable coral
solitudes of the Pacific took a strong hold on Nestoria's imagination.

It helped her bear onward her heavy days, and at night it sometimes lulled
her to sleep. As she bent over her painting she had reveries of floating over
long, smooth billows, under the white, tranquil wings of sailing seabirds, toward
inlets alive with canoes and shores waving with palms. The same pictures
came to her in dreams; she was among wild peoples, but free from perplexities
and terrors; she lived the life of a savage, but she was at peace. So
happy was she in these visions that more than once she shed a few tears on
awaking. As is often the case with the quietly wretched, the sorrowful who
see no immediate escape in effort, she slept much. In sleep she forgot her
alarms, griefs, remorse; in sleep there was a temporary truce to her warfare;
she could lay down her arms when she lost her senses. We see a spirit which,
though able to bear much, felt great weariness. Her reveries, and the eagerness
with which she hailed them, proved how enfeebled was her mind, or rather
how tired. The soul which is faint with hard and long rowing, lands willingly
on this Lotos island of revery.

Much, however, as the girl's thoughts partook of the nature of day-dreams,
she was serious in her purpose of seeking refuge in the Pacific. She really
meant to get to the Marquesas, or some other more unfrequented archipelago,
and bury all her future years in its rank savagery. Perhaps she would be a
missionary; perhaps spend her life in proclaiming the true God to heathens;
it would be a fitting work for one who had been such a criminal; it would be
a Pauline repentance. For she still believed that she acted very wickedly in
refusing to expose the guilt of Edward Wetherel, and longed to do some worthy
work and bear some self-inflicted penalty, which might make partial
amends for her sin, even though justification and forgiveness were unattainable.
Yes, a missionary life in the Pacific, suffering enormous hardships, incurring
daily peril of death, and perhaps putting on the crown of martyrdom,
was the career toward which she must strive. But before she could take flight
she must have wings; and she labored incessantly to fabricate them, adding
dollar to dollar.

Meantime she could not dispense entirely with human fellowship. A troubled
woman instinctively looks for help to a man; and now that Nettie no

longer saw her father walking the stormy sea of life, she felt a need of some
other virile saviour; before she was well aware of it she was stretching out the
arms of her soul toward Lehming. It was very natural. There was as it
were an aureole of sweetness and light—the sweetness of rich sympathy and
the light of a clear intelligence—around the misshapen head of this good pygmy,
easily visible to eyes seeking a deliverer. She had sagacity enough to feel
(rather than to formally argue out) his superiority in real moral muscle over
John Bowlder, burly as this last might seem to a superficial glance. Every
day she sought more and more the society of Lehming, and found more support
and pleasure in it.

As for him, he was eager to give her all the aid and counsel and pity that
she would ask for, or could be brought to accept. No other human being, not
even Edward Wetherel, under the blight of an imputed crime, had ever interested
him so deeply as did this lonely, patient-eyed girl. When a man's heart
is naturally sweet, every intellectual force that he possesses tends to increase
its sweetness. Lehming was all the more benevolent because he had a strong
imagination and unusual powers of reflection. It seemed to him that he had
found a soul shipwrecked on the reefs of some unknown sorrow, and he longed
incessantly to nurse it to health and give it deliverance. He was too delicate
to intrude into Nettie's mystery by questions; but he accorded to her such
watching and attentions as affection grants to an invalid. There was an inexhaustible
willingness to listen to her in the rare hours when she chose to talk;
there was a copious outpouring of instruction and amusement from his stores
of knowledge; there were daily offerings of flowers and fruit. He knew the
preciousness of little marks of regard, because he had rarely received them and
had suffered from the lack of them.

His demeanor toward her had somewhat of the subtle perfume of courtship.
He was far indeed from meaning it as such, for he had not the slightest
hope of winning the girl's heart, and desired only to give forth his own wealth
of emotion. Never forgetting his deformity of body and feature, and altogether
unconscious of his attractive beauty of soul, he was humility itself.
The idea of wooing and winning a handsome young woman would have seemed
to him nothing better than frenzy. Nevertheless, as time went on, he swung
insensibly nearer to this frenzy, approaching it by unconscious circlings, as a
boat nears the Maelstrom. There was to come a period in his life when he
would like a woman precisely as other men like women. He was destined to
fall in love with Nestoria, and toward that fate he was even now drifting.

Not a day passed without a meeting between them. As we have said, the
door of Lehming's library was always open to all the inhabitants of the tenement-house.
But the lodgers in the lower floors did not care to enter it; they
were of that hurried class who write upon the doors of their offices, “Gone to
dinner—back in ten minutes”; they were so dragged about by the almighty
dollar that they had no time or no taste for reading. Nestoria soon discovered
that she was not liable to meet any one in the library besides its owner and
John Bowlder and Imogen Eleonore; and thus she fell into a habit of visiting
it every evening, when darkness forbade her to walk and her hand was
cramped with painting. Lehming was almost always there, sometimes absorbed
in a book, but more often writing. There was an exchange of smiles
—two of the sweetest and most pathetic smiles ever seen; then Nestoria selected
her volume or magazine, and seated herself by the long centre-table;
after that there might be half an hour without a sound except the turning of
leaves or the scratching of a pen.

The very silence of Lehming was an aroma from his exquisite delicacy.
He feared that if he talked much to his guest he would have an air of demanding
amusement from her, and so render his hospitality less free. Moreover,
he found it necessary to resist the first encroachments of a compassionate curiosity
which perpetually tempted him to put such questions to her concerning
her history as she might perhaps not desire to answer. Consequently he laid
down for himself the rule that he must never put aside his pen until she had
first put aside her book. Is it not touching and indeed downright piteous to
find such considerateness and self-control in one at whose feet life had laid so
few favors and pleasures? But it is in just such humble vessels that we might
expect to discover these rare graces. We must stoop to figures weighed down
by crosses, and look under the acute shadows of crowns of thorns, if we would
behold the brows which wear the brightest halos.

Sometimes, however, there were long communings between these two children
of sorrow. Their talk frequently concerned literature, for Lehming was
a contributor to various periodicals, and furthermore he had the project of a
book on his mind, and he loved to discuss the art in which he was a student.
One of these dialogues we may find it worth while to listen to, because, although
it began upon the most commonplace circumstances of a life of authorship,
it eventually wound and crept on until it touched the borders of Nestoria's
woful secret.

“Is making stories very profitable?” inquired the girl, wondering whether
she could write and thus earn money wherewith to fly to undiscoverable
islands.

“It brings in something,” replied Lehming, entering eagerly upon a subject
which profoundly interested him. “In the monthlies, weeklies, and dailies
there is a fair market for tales and articles. A magazinist with talent,
who works hard and gives all his time to his work, can average twelve or perhaps
fifteen hundred dollars a year. In other words, he can earn something
more than a common carpenter, and a good deal less than an expert machinist.
But when you have made that modest statement, you have summed up
nearly the whole of a writer's chance for income. The profit on a book,
speaking in a general way, would not support an infant. People say that the
periodical has killed the volume; but while this is true in a measure, it is not
all the trouble; it is mainly the foreign reprint which kills the American work.
Are you aware that any one of our publishers can seize upon any European
book without paying the author a penny? Such is the dishonest fact; now
look at the discouraging result. The American volume (let us suppose it is
Lehming's) is necessarily loaded with a royalty payable to the writer; this royalty
is only the pittance of ten per cent. in most cases, but it raises the price
of the work by that amount; if without it the price would be ninety cents, for
instance, it must now be sold at a dollar. Well, what sort of competition is
this dollar book exposed to? The competition of Dickens, Reade, Thackeray,
and all the athletes of foreign literature—all selling ten per cent. cheaper. Ten
per cent.? I should come nearer the mark in saying twenty-five per cent., fifty
per cent. Our publisher only selects for reprints the best of European works,
such as have already succeeded in their own country—such as are sure to succeed
here. He is so certain of purchasers that he can afford to be cheap, and
also to advertise liberally. He is so certain of competition if he demands a
high price, that he must be cheap. You will find Dickens and Reade and many
others on our book counters at fifty and thirty cents a volume. Now, what does
the purchaser do? Do you imagine that he will buy Lehming at a dollar when

he can get Lehming's master at half a dollar? He makes the bargain that will
give him the most for his money, and in so doing he helps to kill American
literature. It is the only business in our country in which the producer is
completely sacrificed to the consumer. The result is that we have no literature;
we have only a dozen or so of professed authors; and that dozen write
mainly for the monthlies and weeklies. The American book is growing rarer
year by year, and will soon be as extinct as the dodo. Men will not continue
a labor which brings them only neglect and starvation.”

“But a few write,” said Nestoria. “You write.”

“A few will always write,” answered Lehming. “Every year five or six
tyros step forward and awkwardly renew a useless struggle. But the circumstances
of the case are inexorable; they wear out the most hopeful and the
ablest spirits. We shall never have practised and skilful authors until we establish
such an international copyright as will enable the native work to enter
the market on equal terms with the foreign reprint. This competition of theft,
moreover, is not the only trouble. Literature in our country is shackled with
imposts and with customs duties. Paper, types, type metal, the materials for
binding, everything which goes to the making of a book, bears a load of taxation
for the benefit of some manufacturer. Our publishers themselves are so
burdened that they are unable to hold our own market, and are steadily becoming
mere distributors for English publications. It seems as if our legislators
had sworn that, whatever else they left undone, they would root out American
literature.”

“I don't fully understand, but it seems very discouraging,” sighed Nestoria.
“I was wondering whether I could write; but I will make you a present
of my subject.” Then, after a moment of pondering, she went on hastily, as
if impelled to speak, “I had a strange idea in my mind. It was that a girl
should like some one, and like him very, very much, only to find that he was
utterly wicked. Then what? Should she merely abandon him? Or should
she denounce him to punishment? I don't know. I can't see how it should
end.”

“She should both abandon and denounce him,” answered Lehming with the
facile promptness of poetical justice.

Nestoria recoiled from him a little, pressed her hands together, and turned
slightly pale.

“Stop,” added the young man meditatively. “You have proposed a difficult
problem. We must not judge even fictitious personages with haste and
indifference. If we do not owe a duty to their shadowy existences, we owe
one to our own mental and moral nature. I must have time to consider your
riddle.”

Nothing more was said on the subject; indeed, Nestoria was frightened at
having said so much; but Lehming brooded over her suggestion frequently.
Of course he asked himself whether the girl had alluded to the sorrow which
looked out of her plaintive eyes; and of course the query, although unanswerable,
made her all the more attractive to his sensitive and compassionate spirit.
Other conversations, and other vague, timid hints of suffering, quickened his
sympathy. Even if there were no mystery of great trouble in this child's life,
he felt certain that she was lonely and almost friendless, and he longed to surround
her with consolation. Not yet, not even in the rare vagaries which he
permitted to his imagination, did he purpose to offer her a heart in place of
the one which, as he sometimes suspected, she had found corrupt and cast
away with noble loathing. He was too meek to believe that his affection could

be worthy of complete acceptance, even at hands which pleaded for affection
as a charity; and to ask any woman whatever to receive him as a husband
would, it seemed to him, be altogether unnatural and monstrous, and shamefully
absurd.

But he was slipping toward Nestoria; he was becoming every day less and
less the ruler of his thoughts and feelings; there was no telling how his moth-like
circlings might end. Eyes which in this matter were keener than his,
though duller by far in almost all things else, watched him with a petulant
disapproval, judging him to be very near the flame of love.

“It will be real shabby if Mr. Lehming tries to marry that poor little chit,”
said Imogen Eleonore to herself more than once. “Mr. Lehming ought to
know that he isn't a proper person to have a pretty girl. He may be very
good and have a first-rate education, but he's a little jolter-headed hunchback,
and not a fit match at all for my Nettie. If he wasn't a prominent instructor,
I'd give him a piece of my mind about it.”

Miss Jones, we perceive, put the matter in order before her mind in plain,
straightforward terms, not encumbering it with the retinue of bombastic
phrases which she favored when in society. We may infer that she really and
honestly feared lest the incongruous wooing of which she discoursed might
come about.