CHAPTER III
WHAT Blaise Olifant told Olivia about his prospective co-inhabitant of The Towers, and what Rowington, the publisher, and one or two others knew about him, amounted to the following:
One morning a motor-car, having the second-hand air of a hiring garage and unoccupied save for the chauffeur, drew up before the door of a great London publishing house. The chauffeur stepped from his seat, collected a brown-paper package from the interior, and entered.
“Can I see a member of the firm?”
The clerk in the enquiry office looked surprised. Chauffeurs offering manuscripts on behalf of their employers were plentiful as blackberries in September; but chauffeurs demanding an interview with the august heads of the house were rare as blackberries in March.
“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” he replied civilly. “If you leave it here, it will be all right. I’ll give you a receipt which you can take back.”
“I want to explain,” said the chauffeur.
Scores of people weekly expressed the same desire. It was the business of the clerk to suppress explanations.
“It’s a manuscript to be submitted? Well, you must tell the author——”
“I am the author,” said the chauffeur.
“Oh!” said the clerk, and his subconscious hand pushed the manuscript a millimetre forward on the polished mahogany counter.
“The circumstances, you see, are exceptional.”
There being something exceptional in the voice and manner of the chauffeur, the clerk regarded him for the first time as a human being.
“I quite see,” said he; “but the rules of the firm are strict. If you will leave the manuscript, it will be read. Oh, I give you my word of honour,” he smiled. “Everything that comes in is read. We have a staff who do nothing else. Is your name and address on it?” He began to untie the string.
“The name, but not the address.”
On the slip of paper which the clerk pushed across to him he wrote:
Alexis Triona,
c/o John Briggs.
3 Cherbury Mews,
Surrey Gardens, W.
The clerk scribbled an acknowledgment, the chauffeur thrust it into his pocket, and, driving away, was lost in the traffic of London.
A fortnight afterwards, Alexis Triona, who, together with John Briggs, as one single and indissoluble chauffeur, inhabited a little room over the garage in Cherbury Mews, received a letter to the effect that the publishing house, being interested in the MS. “Through Blood and Snow,” which he had kindly submitted, would be glad if he would call, with a view to publication. The result was a second visit on the part of the chauffeur to the great firm. The clerk welcomed him with a bland smile, and showed him into a comfortably furnished room whose thick Turkey carpet signified the noiseless mystery of many discreet decades, and where a benevolent middle-aged man in gold spectacles stood with his back to the chimney-piece. He advanced with outstretched hand to meet the author.
“Mr. Triona? I’m glad to meet you. Won’t you sit down?”
He motioned to a chair by the tidy writing table, where he sat and pulled forward the manuscript, which had been placed there in readiness for the interview. He said pleasantly:
“Well. Let us get to business at once. We should like to publish your book.”
The slight quivering of sensitive nostrils alone betrayed the author’s emotion.
“I’m glad,” he replied. “I think it’s worth publishing.”
Mr. Rowington tapped the MS. in front of him with his forefinger. “Are these your own personal experiences?”
“They are,” said the chauffeur.
“Excuse my questioning you,” said the publisher. “Not that it would greatly matter. But one likes to know. We should be inclined to publish it, either as a work of fiction or a work of fact; but the handling of it—the method of publicity—would be different. Of course, you see,” he went on benevolently, “a thing may be absolutely true in essence, like lots of the brilliant little war stories that have been written the past few years, but not true in the actual historical sense. Now, your book would have more value if we could say that it is true in this actual historical sense, if we could say that it’s an authentic record of personal experiences.”
“You can say that,” answered Triona quietly.
The publisher leaned back in his chair.
“How a man could have gone through what you have and remained sane passes understanding.”
For the first time the young man’s set features relaxed into a smile.
“I shouldn’t like to swear that I am sane,” said he.
“I’ve heard ex-prisoners say,” Mr. Rowington remarked, “that six months’ solitary confinement under such conditions”—he patted the manuscript—“is as much as the human reason can stand.”
“As soon as hunting and killing vermin ceases to be a passionate interest in life,” said Triona.
They conversed for a while. Stimulated by the publisher’s question, Triona supplemented details in the book, described his final adventure, his landing penniless in London, his search for work. At last, said he, he had found a situation as chauffeur in the garage of a motor-hiring company. The publisher glanced at the slip pinned to the cover of the manuscript.
“And John Briggs?”
“A pseudonym. Briggs was my mother’s name. I am English on both sides, though my great-grandfather’s people were Maltese. My father, however, was a naturalized Russian. I’ve mentioned it in the book.”
“Quite so,” said the publisher. “I only wanted to get things clear. And now as to terms. Have you any suggestion?”
Afterwards, Alexis Triona confessed to a wild impulse to ask for a hundred pounds—outright sale—and to a sudden lack of audacity which kept him silent. The terms which the publisher proposed, when the royalty system and the probabilities of such a book’s profits were explained to him, made him gasp with wonder. And when, in consideration, said the publisher, of his present impecunious position, he was offered an advance in respect of royalties exceeding the hundred pounds of his crazy promptings, his heart thumped until it became an all but intolerable pain.
“Do you think,” he asked, amazed that his work should have such market value, “that I could earn my living by writing?”
“Undoubtedly.” The publisher beamed on the new author. “You have the matter, you have the gift, the style, the humour, the touch. I’m sure I could place things for you. Indeed, it would be to our common advantage, pending publication. Only, of course, you mustn’t use any of the matter in the book. You quite understand?”
Alexis Triona understood. He went away dancing on air. Write? His brain seethed with ideas. That the written expression of them should open the gates of Fortune was a new conception. He had put together the glowing, vivid book impelled by strange, unknown forces. It was, as he had confidently declared, worth publishing. But the possible reward was beyond his dreams. And he could see more visions. …
So he went back to his garage and drove idle people to dinners and theatres, and in his scanty leisure wrote strange romances of love and war in Circassia and Tartary, and, through the agency of the powerful publishing house, sold them to solid periodicals, until the public mind became gradually familiarized with his name.