Una discovered that the owner and the managing editor did not regard Walter Babson as a permanent prop of the institution; that they would keep him, at his present salary of twenty-five dollars a week, only till some one happened in who would do the same work for less money. His prose was clever but irregular; he wasn't always to be depended upon for grammar; in everything he was unstable; yet the owner's secretary reported the owner as saying that some day, if Babson married the right woman, he would "settle down and make good."
Una did not dare to make private reservations regarding what "the right woman" ought to mean in this case, but she burned at the thought of Walter Babson's marrying, and for an instant she saw quite clearly the film of soft dark hair that grew just below his sharp cheek-bone. But she forgot the sweetness of the vision in scorn of herself for even thinking of marriage with a weakling; scorn of herself for aspiring to marry a man who regarded her as only a dull stenographer; and a maternal anxiety over him that was untouched by passion.
Babson returned to the office, immaculate, a thin, fiery soul. But he was closeted with the secretary of the company for an hour, and when he came out his step was slow. He called for Una and dictated articles in a quiet voice, with no jesting. His hand was unsteady, he smoked cigarettes constantly, and his eye was an unwholesome yellow.
She said to him suddenly, a few days later, "Mr. Babson, I'd be glad if I could take care of any papers or anything for you."
"Thanks. You might stick these chassis sketches away some place right now."
So she was given the chance to keep his desk straight. He turned to her for everything.
He said to her, abruptly, one dreary late afternoon of April when she felt immensely languid and unambitious: "You're going to succeed-unless you marry some dub. But there's one rule for success-mind you, I don't follow it myself, I can't, but it's a grand old hunch: 'If you want to get on, always be ready to occupy the job just ahead of you.' Only-what the devil is the job just ahead of a stenog.? I've been thinking of you and wondering. What is it?"
"Honestly, Mr. Babson, I don't know. Here, anyway. Unless it's lieutenant of the girls."
"Well-oh, that's just miffle-business, that kind of a job. Well, you'd better learn to express yourself, anyway. Some time you women folks will come into your own with both feet. Whenever you get the chance, take my notes and try to write a better spiel from them than I do.... That won't be hard, I guess!"
"I don't know why you are so modest, Mr. Babson. Every girl in the office thinks you write better than any of the other editors."
"Yuh-but they don't know. They think that just because I chuck 'em under the chin. I can't do this technical stuff.... Oh, Lord! what an evening it'll be!... I suppose I'll go to a show. Nice, lonely city, what?... You come from here?"
"From Pennsylvania."
"Got any folks?"
"My mother is here with me."
"That's nice. I'll take her and you to some bum two-bit vaudeville show some night, if you'd like.... Got to show my gratitude to you for standing my general slovenliness.... Lord! nice evening-dine at a rôtisserie with a newspaper for companion. Well-g' night and g' luck."
Una surprised her mother, when they were vivisecting the weather after dinner, by suddenly crying all over the sofa cushions.
She knew all of Walter Babson's life from those two or three sentences of his.
§ 3
François Villons America has a-plenty. An astonishing number of Americans with the literary itch do contrive to make a living out of that affliction. They write motion-picture scenarios and fiction for the magazines that still regard detective stories as the zenith of original art. They gather in woman-scented flats to discuss sex, or in hard-voiced groups to play poker. They seem to find in the creation of literature very little besides a way of evading regular office hours. Below this stratum of people so successful that one sometimes sees their names in print is the yearning band of young men who want to write. Just to write-not to write anything in particular; not to express any definite thought, but to be literary, to be Bohemian, to dance with slim young authoresses of easy morals, and be jolly dogs and free souls. Some of them are dramatists with unacted dramas; some of them do free verse which is just as free as the productions of regular licensed poets. Some of them do short stories-striking, rather biological, very destructive of conventions. Some of them are ever so handy at all forms; they are perennial candidates for any job as book-reviewer, dramatic critic, or manuscript-reader, since they have the naïve belief that these occupations require neither toil nor training, and enable one to "write on the side." Meanwhile they make their livings as sub-editors on trade journals, as charity-workers, or as assistants to illiterate literary agents.
To this slum of literature Walter Babson belonged. He felt that he was an author, though none of his poetry had ever been accepted, and though he had never got beyond the first chapter of any of his novels, nor the first act of any of his plays (which concerned authors who roughly resembled Walter Babson).
He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew more aware that he hadn't even a dim candle of talent; that he was ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices-as soon as he could get control of his chaotic desires. Literally, he hated himself at times; hated his own egotism, his treacherous appetite for drink and women and sloth, his imitative attempts at literature. But no one knew how bitterly he despised himself, in lonely walks in the rain, in savage pacing about his furnished room. To others he seemed vigorously conceited, cock-sure, noisily ready to blame the world for his own failures.
Walter Babson was born in Kansas. His father was a farmer and horse-doctor, a heavy drinker, an eccentric who joined every radical political movement. In a country school, just such a one as Una had taught, then in high school in a near-by town, Walter had won all the prizes for essays and debating, and had learned a good deal about Shakespeare and Cæsar and George Washington. Also he had learned a good deal about drinking beer, smoking manfully, and tempting the giggling girls who hung about the "deepot." He ran away from high school, and in the most glorious years of his life worked his way down the Mississippi and up the Rio Grande, up to Alaska and down to Costa Rica, a butt and jester for hoboes, sailors, longshoremen, miners, cow-punchers, lunch-room owners, and proprietors of small newspapers. He learned to stick type and run a press. He returned to Kansas and worked on a country newspaper, studying poetry and college-entrance requirements in the evening. He had, at this time, the not entirely novel idea that "he ought to be able to make a lot of good fiction out of all his experiences." Actually, he had no experiences, because he had no instinct for beauty. The proof is that he read quite solemnly and reverently a vile little periodical for would-be authors, which reduced authorship to a way of earning one's living by supplying editors with cheap but ingenious items to fill space. It put literature on a level with keeping a five-and-ten-cent store. But Walter conned its pompous trade journal discussions as to whether the name and address of the author should be typed on the left or the right side of the first page of a manuscript; its lively little symposia, by such successful market-gardeners of literature as Mamie Stuyvesant Blupp and Bill Brown and Dr. J. F. Fitzneff, on the inspiring subject of whether it paid better to do filler verse for cheap magazines, or long verse for the big magazines. At the end, this almost madly idealistic journal gave a list of wants of editors; the editor of Lingerie and Laughter wanted "short, snappy stuff with a kick in it; especially good yarns about models, grisettes, etc." Wanderlust was in the market for "stories with a punch that appealed to every red-blooded American; nothing about psychology, problems, Europe, or love wanted." The Plymouth Rock Fancier announced that it could use "a good, lively rural poem every week; must be clean and original."