“It seems to me,” said Pickering, “that the demand for the work is almost unlimited.” As he spoke, he looked at a hole in his boot, and tried to speak in a tone that should show that he was above his boots.
“It may be so,” said Boothby; “but if so, the demands do not run in my way. I will, however, keep Mr. Webb’s note by me, and if I find I can do anything for you, I will. Good morning.”
Then Mr. Boothby got up from his chair, and Fred Pickering understood that he was told to go away. He was furious in his abuse of Boothby as he described the interview to his wife that evening.
The editor of the International he could not get to see; but he got a note from him. The editor sent his compliments, and would be glad to read the article to which Mr. W. W⸺ had alluded. As Mr. W. W⸺ had alluded to no article, Fred saw that the editor was not inclined to take much trouble on his behalf. Nevertheless, an article should be sent. An article was written to which Fred gave six weeks of hard work, and which contained an elaborate criticism on the Samson Agonistes. Fred’s object was to prove that Milton had felt himself to be a superior Samson—blind, indeed, in the flesh, as Samson was blind, but not blind in the spirit, as was Samson when he crushed the Philistines. The poet had crushed his Philistines with all his intellectual eyes about him. Then there was a good deal said about the Philistines of those days as compared with the other Philistines, in all of which Fred thought that he took much higher ground than certain other writers in magazines on the same subject. The editor sent back his compliments, and said that the International never admitted reviews of old books.
“Insensate idiot!” said Fred, tearing the note asunder, and then tearing his own hair, on both sides of his head. “And these are the men who make the world of letters! Idiot!—thickheaded idiot!”
“I suppose he has not read it,” said Mary.
“Then why hasn’t he read it? Why doesn’t he do the work for which he is paid? If he has not read it, he is a thief as well as an idiot.”
Poor Fred had not thought much of his chance from the International when he first got the editor’s note; but as he had worked at his Samson he had become very fond of it, and golden dreams had fallen on him, and he had dared to whisper to himself words of wondrous praise which might be forthcoming, and to tell himself of enquiries after the unknown author of the great article about the Philistines. As he had thought of this, and as the dreams and the whispers had come to him, he had rewritten his essay from the beginning, making it grander, bigger, more eloquent than before. He became very eloquent about the Philistines, and mixed with his eloquence some sarcasm which could not, he thought, be without effect even in dull-brained, heavy-livered London. Yes; he had dared to hope. And then his essay—such an essay as this—was sent back to him with a notice that the International did not insert reviews of old books. Hideous, brainless, meaningless idiot! Fred in his fury tore his article into a hundred fragments; and poor Mary was employed, during the whole of the next week, in making another copy of it from the original blotted sheets, which had luckily been preserved.
“Pearls before swine!” Fred said to himself, as he slowly made his way up to the library of the Museum on the last day of that week.
That was in the end of October. He had not then earned a single shilling for many months, and the nearer prospect of that starvation of which he had once spoken so cheerily was becoming awfully frightful to him. He had said that there were worse fates than to starve. Now, as he looked at his wife, and thought of the baby that was to be added to them, and counted the waning heap of sovereigns, he began to doubt whether there was in truth anything worse than to starve. And now, too, idleness made his life more wretched to him than it had ever been. He could not bring himself to work when it seemed to him that his work was to have no result; literally none.
“Had you not better write to your father?” said Mary.
He made no reply, but went out and walked up and down Museum Street.
He had been much disgusted by the treatment he had received from Mr. Boothby, the publisher; but in November he brought himself to write to Mr. Boothby, and ask him whether some employment could not be found.
“You will perhaps remember Mr. Wickham Webb’s letter,” wrote Fred, “and the interview which I had with you last July.”
His wife had wished him to speak more civilly, and to refer to the pleasure of the interview. But Fred had declined to condescend so far. There were still left to them some thirty pounds.
A fortnight afterwards, when December had come, he got a reply from Mr. Boothby, in which he was asked to call at a certain hour at the shop in St. James’s Street. This he
