Chapter XIII: Dick Begins to Write a Novel

“Come home,” was the order that Dick received in reply to his telegram from Key West reporting himself there and asking for instructions.

He was very well satisfied with this, for various reasons. He was far behind in his facts, although he had been writing, writing, as fast as he could. While in Texas and on the Red River he had been writing still about Hot Springs; and even in Key West he had not begun yet to do his descriptions of New Orleans.

However, there was a weightier reason than this that made him desire to go home. While on his travels the plot of a novel had somehow stolen into his mind, and he had worked it out so far that he was anxious to begin writing it.

“I certainly could not do anything toward putting it on paper while I am traveling,” he said to himself. “My time is not my own now, anyhow, but even if it were I should have no chance. I can’t help thinking about it and working it out. The only way that I can ever write a novel is to have the whole thing thoroughly in mind before I begin to write, so that when I do write I shall know exactly what I am about.

“They say that novelists’ methods of work differ very much. Some men begin to write with nothing but the main idea in their minds, and let the thing develop as they go along. Those are the men who write and rewrite, and cut and add and change, till at last there is hardly anything left of the original. I know one celebrated writer who rewrote a novel six times, and it was very bad when he finished it.

“That plan would not do for me. I must have everything perfectly mapped out before I begin; so well in hand that I could write the last chapter first, or the middle one, or do any scene or conversation without reference to the rest. I don’t think it is because I am too lazy to rewrite; more likely my newspaper training has taught me to gather all my material up and sort it out before I pick up the pen.”

There was time to collect facts for several good articles in Key West before he could start; for Key West is unique among cities. The most southerly point in the United States, most of its inhabitants are Cubans who work in the big cigar factories, and their ways of life are distinctly Cuban. Then the isolated position of the place, on a tiny island miles from the continent, makes it almost a land to itself, with many strange customs not to be found elsewhere.

Dick found that he could return to New York either by the direct steamer or by the Plant System boat to Tampa, and thence by rail up the Atlantic Coast. He promptly chose the latter way, not only because it was much faster, but also on account of the opportunity it gave him to see more of the country.

“I cannot see too many places,” he reflected, “if I am going to write novels; and I am certainly going to try. If I should have occasion to write about Tampa or Jacksonville or Charleston or Richmond, it would be necessary to know something about those places. This rail ride will ‘enlarge my field of action,’ as Darling would say.”

After a beautiful voyage up the smooth Gulf of Mexico the steamship landed him in Tampa, and there he found a through train ready to carry him to New York. For scores of miles through Florida the tracks ran between orange groves; and as the trees were white with blossoms, the air was perfumed with their delightful fragrance. Into Georgia the train carried him, then across South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, into Pennsylvania, and at last across New Jersey to Jersey City. Washington was a sore temptation to him to stop, for he felt that he ought to become familiar with the National Capital. But none knew better than Dick that a newspaper’s order to “come home” does not mean come next week, or the day after to-morrow, but come at once. There might be work of the utmost importance waiting for him.

It was seven o’clock in the evening when the train arrived in Jersey City, and Dick went directly to the Transport office to report his return.

“Darling will be glad to see me back, anyhow,” he said to himself as he sprang merrily up the stairs; “so will Dr. Goode. The doctor always has a warm welcome for a fellow who’s been away on a journey. Three whole months since I’ve seen any of the boys! There’ll be some new faces among the reporters, I suppose. It’s funny to think that I’m one of the ‘old’ men now!”

He spoke to the office boys as he entered the big room, and hurried up to the front to see Dr. Goode and the managing editor and the night city editor and Darling. Jack Randall and Lawrence and two or three others tried to stop him as he passed, but he waved his hand to them and went on.

Something looked unfamiliar at the desks by the front windows. It took him a second or two to grasp the situation and see that Darling was sitting at the managing editor’s desk, and that Mr. Brown, the city editor, was in Dr. Goode’s chair.

“Hello, Darling, old chap!” he exclaimed, putting out his hand; “what are you doing here?”

“Be a little more respectful, if you please, in addressing your managing editor!” Darling answered. “I can’t have reporters and correspondents calling me ‘old chap’ in the office.” There was a sly twinkle in Darling’s eye as he said it; and he gave Dick’s hand a tremendous wrench.

“Managing editor!” Dick repeated. “You don’t say that you’re”--

“Oh, yes, I do,” Darling interrupted. “These little things happen sometimes. The managing editor that was has gone to take charge of a paper in Minneapolis, and I have been put in his place.”

“Shake again!” Dick exclaimed. “You the managing editor! Why that makes you my boss, and you might send me out to do a fire to-night, if you wanted to; but you’d better not. But where is the doctor? What is Mr. Brown doing at his desk?”

Darling turned towards the papers in front of him and looked at them hard.

“There is bad news as well as good, Dick,” he replied after a moment’s pause. “Dear, old doctor! He”--

“What! he’s not sick, is he?” Dick interrupted. But the moisture in Darling’s eyes was more eloquent than words. “O Darling! Oh, no, old chap, you don’t mean it? He’s not”--

Darling sadly shook his head and fumbled among his papers. “A week ago yesterday, Dick, we took him over to Greenwood. His poor old eyes will never give him any more trouble in this world. All these things have happened within a few days, and we wrote you about them; but I suppose you left Key West before the letters arrived.”

Dick turned away without another word, for he would not trust his voice in that cruel moment. Sadly he shook hands with Mr. Brown, then looking toward Darling again, he said almost in a whisper:

“There is nothing for me to do to-night; I need not stay here. I--I must go home. I will be up when you come home, Darling.”

As he walked quickly out of the big room Dick saw several new men, much such young reporters as he once was, nudge each other and look at him. He knew what that meant, for he had noticed it before. The youngsters were saying to one another, “See that fellow! that’s Richard Sumner, the man who’s been writing those letters from Mexico and the Southwest!”

Once he had been looking at the older men in the same admiring way; but now that his own time had come it could not even make him smile. For who was to tell him when he did good work, and point out weaknesses in his style, or comfort him in trouble, or advise him, or do him a thousand little kindnesses, with Dr. Goode lying over in Greenwood?

There was a warm welcome for him in the flat, and he did his best to conceal his grief over Dr. Goode behind his satisfaction at Darling’s promotion. That he could hardly realize any more than he could fully realize that he should see his good friend no more.

“It’s too astonishing for a man to grasp so suddenly,” he said to his mother and Florrie after the first volley of hugs and kisses. “Darling is exactly the man for the place; exactly. But there were four or five people between him and the managing editorship. However, they do those things sometimes, as I have learned by experience.”

“You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s now, Mr. Richard Sumner,” Florrie laughed. “If you don’t do exactly as I want you to about everything, I’ll have Harry reduce your salary or put you back at city work. I’ll see that he keeps you busy.”

“I don’t think he can keep me any busier than I always am,” Dick, retorted. “I’ve hardly had a minute to myself since I began work on the Transport. But I want to begin some work for myself now, and I’m remarkably glad that Darling is the man I’ll have to negotiate with.”

There was time to do at least part of an article between the supper and the hour for Darling’s arrival, and Dick shut himself up and fell to work as naturally as if he had not been away.

“Hello!” he exclaimed when he came to a short pause somewhere after midnight. “I’d forgotten that I was in New York. I’ve been so engrossed with writing about New Orleans and the levee and the Spanish fort and St. Charles Street, that I seemed to be down there among the Creoles.” He was always pleased when he found himself carried away with his subject in this way; so completely saturated with it that he became oblivious to his real surroundings. He liked to laugh with his funny characters, and sometimes to drop a stray tear with the unfortunate ones--when he was entirely alone.

When Darling came in, a little later now than before, because he had to look over an early copy of the paper before leaving the office and sometimes make a second edition, Dick was ready to join him in the late supper. They had a long talk about Dr. Goode and everything that happened in the office.

“I intended to have a confab with the managing editor as soon as I got back, Darling,” Dick said after he had heard all the news; “but I didn’t think my talk would be with you. You know what we were saying some time ago about my writing--writing a novel. I have been reading as much as I could while I was away, and I have the plot of a good story in my mind. Pretty well worked up, too, so that when I begin to write it I can go straight ahead.

“Now what I am most in need of is time to write. I have about a week’s work to finish up the letters of my last trip, and of course I will do that first. After that I want to get some time to myself, if I can manage it. Mother was so economical while I was away that she has saved more than half of my salary; and that with what I had saved before will bring my fund up to nearly a thousand dollars in the bank. I can do the actual writing of a novel in three months; and I feel as if I could afford to ask for that much vacation from the office, without salary of course. Now is the time for me to strike while my name is in the papers so much.”

“You are quite right to strike while the iron is hot,” Darling replied. “The kind of work you are doing now will not last always, as I told you before; it never does with any man. But I think you can do better than ask for a long vacation. I have never known a man to be given a long vacation for such a purpose, and I should not like to begin with you in making such a break. They all know how we stand toward each other, and they would accuse me of favoritism at once if I did it. Why not go on space, Dick?”

“On space?” Dick repeated. “I don’t see how that would help me any.”

“It would help me to help you,” Darling replied; “and of course I want to help you as much as I can, though on the other hand I must do what is best for the office. You wouldn’t ask me to show you favors that I would not show to another man in your place.”

“Certainly not!” Dick exclaimed. “I wouldn’t accept them.”

“You can go on space as a special man, and I shall feel warranted in paying you fifteen dollars a column. Of course in that case your salary will stop, and you will be paid only for what you write, or the time you are actually busy. That will leave you master of your own time to a great extent. You might average perhaps three days a week for the paper and three for yourself, and at that rate you could finish your novel in six months. You know some of the space men make a great deal of money. I think that will be better for you than to stop work entirely for three months; and it will certainly be better for the office, because we can call upon you whenever we need you.”

“I don’t know but you’re right about that, Darling,” Dick answered after a little reflection. “It will seem strange at first not to have the salary coming in regularly; but, then, three columns a week will more than make up for it, and I think I ought to average that much.”

Dick had a great deal to think about when he went to bed an hour or two before the sun rose. But the desire to write his novel was stronger in his mind than anything else, except his grief over the loss of Dr. Goode. He felt that his plot was a good one--original and bright. His newspaper letters had met with great success; why should his novel not do as well?

For the next week he toiled away, every afternoon and part of the night, till his letters were finished. When the last one was done he laid down his pen with some regret.

“Now for space work,” he said to himself, “and what I hope will be the best work I have done yet. The novel is so thoroughly laid out that I have nothing to do but write it. It may not go at all; it may fall flat or be laughed at; but I am going to do my best with it. If I can write one novel that will go, I can write more.”

He fell to work at it at once, stopping only when Darling gave him special work to do for the office. At the end of a fortnight Darling asked him how the novel was coming on.

“Oh, I’m learning!” he laughed. “I know more about novel-writing now than I did two weeks ago, at any rate. Didn’t I tell you that I had it all so well laid out in my mind that I had only to do the actual writing? Well, I really believed that, which just shows how little I knew about the trade. Why, Darling, I wrote the opening sentences a dozen times before I got them to suit me! After the first two chapters were done I saw how very much the whole opening scheme might be improved, so I threw them away and began over again. I’m on my fifth chapter now, but there’s hardly a line that has not been written two or three times over.”

“I’m glad of that,” Darling said; “nothing but hard pulling will produce good work. How much do you do every day?”

“Well, after I go down to the office to see whether I’m needed, I do a thousand words in the afternoon. That is my regular afternoon’s work. Then after dinner, with the whole night before me, I hope for two thousand words more. You know I am a very rapid penman. But I don’t push myself at night. If I’m not in the mood, I read for an hour or two. That generally puts me in proper trim.”

“What do you read? Shakespeare?”

“No,” Dick replied; “never while I’m writing. He is a capital stimulant at other times, but in the midst of writing I find he confuses me. His heroic style is so totally different from the modern style that there must be an interval between. No; at those times I want a language nearer to the language I use myself, and I find it in Thackeray--usually in Vanity Fair.”

“I have heard other writers say the same thing,” Darling acquiesced. “A writer unconsciously imitates to some extent the style he has just been reading. At least, so I understand; a managing editor, you know, is a complicated machine for watching the news of the world and getting it all into his own paper. He cannot be expected to be an expert in literary style.”

“He is valuable as a signer of reporters’ checks,” Dick laughed; “and when a man runs short of money in a distant city he is the most important person in the world.”

The interruptions in the novel-writing were always provoking, but they could not be avoided. Sometimes Dick was kept away for days at a time, and on one occasion for a whole week. “Never mind, I’m fresh for a new start,” he said to himself at such times, and took up the thread where he had laid it down. Mrs. Sumner and Florrie took great pains to keep the flat quiet while he was at work, for somehow, though he could write newspaper articles with the whole office talking around him, the least noise disturbed him when he was at work on his novel.

“Sh!” he heard one little girl say to another in the hall one day as they passed the door of his flat; “don’t talk so loud, there’s a man writing a book in there!” But he could not even smile just then, for he was trying to work his way through a difficult situation.

Almost the only newspaper work that Dick really enjoyed while he was engaged upon the novel came to him about the time that he had reached the twelfth chapter; and perhaps the way that came to him had something to do with his enjoyment of it. When he went into the office Darling handed him a memorandum, and with the memorandum a brief note from the editor-in-chief, not intended for Dick’s eyes.

“Send the best writer you have on this job,” the note said; “get Sumner if possible.”

“This job” was to write a complete description of the working of the New York Fire Department, and to do it properly Dick must go to an engine-house and live there like a fireman till the engine was called out to at least one fire; and then go out with it and help handle the hose. To be allowed to do this he must go first to the department headquarters in Mercer Street and get a permit.

“That is very nice in the old man to call me the best writer in the office,” he said to Darling. “I only hope the publishers will think so when I send them my novel.” He said nothing about the note to any one else, except his mother and Florrie, but he thought about it a great deal. “The best writer in the office! And the Transport is everywhere admitted to be the best written newspaper in America!”

He could not help feeling elated over such a compliment as he rode up to Mercer Street. “Here, Dick!” he kept saying to himself; “Dick, wash the rollers!” “Dick, come here!” and then by contrast, “Send the best writer in the office; get Sumner if possible.” But experience had given a veneering to his exterior, and he would not for any money have let his companions know that he gave the note a second thought.

“I think we had better send you down to Number Four in Liberty Street,” the chief of the fire department said when Dick made known his mission. “There are a great many fires in that district, and Number Four is the headquarters of the chief of the First Battalion. He can give you the information you require.”

The chief wrote out an order to the foreman of Number Four, directing him to “allow Mr. Richard Sumner to remain in the engine-house for forty-eight hours, or longer if he desires; give him all possible information and allow him to accompany the apparatus to fires.” It was such an order as only the representative of a first-rate newspaper could have obtained.

When Dick arrived at the Number Four engine-house in Liberty Street, opposite the site of the old postoffice, next morning, he was politely received by the foreman of the company, and by the chief of the First Battalion. He saw on the ground floor of the building a beautiful fire engine, resplendent with polished brass, and by its side the tender, with its reel of hose. At the rear were three stalls with fine large horses in them; and near the centre was a smooth pole running up to the upper stories of the building through hatchways cut in the floors.

“So you are going to be a fireman for a few days, are you?” the battalion chief asked as he read Dick’s order. “Well, you will find it exciting work if we happen to have a good fire. And you’ll have to step around pretty fast, to go out with the apparatus. Come upstairs with me and I will show you first where the men live.”

Dick and the chief were crossing the floor of the big room toward the stairway when there came a terrible clatter.

“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a big gong almost over their heads.

“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a smaller gong in the rear by the horses.

Instantly there was a rush of men and horses across the floor toward the engine and tender.

“Look out! Dodge the horses!” the chief shouted; and at the same moment he seized Dick by the arm and dragged him to the foot of the stairs, out of the way.

It was none too soon either; for the next second the three powerful horses dashed past like the wind and took their places, one on either side of the pole of the engine and the third between the shafts of the tender. The harness lay ready on their backs, and Dick noticed that men were already at their stations to snap the springs that attached the horses to the apparatus. But what a rush it was! In another second the driver was in his seat in the front of the engine, and the engineer and his assistant were on a platform at the rear. A driver and six firemen were on the tender, and each driver had the reins in his hands, ready for a dash. One man stood by the big folding doors in front, his hand on the latch, ready to throw them open. Every man was in uniform, and every man knew just where to go. Dick took it all in, though the whole thing took less than ten seconds.

“Tap-tap!” said both bells again; and the drivers jumped down from their seats, the horses were unfastened and trotted back to their stalls; it was all over.

“What does that mean?” Dick asked. “If there is a fire, why doesn’t the engine go?”

“Because it was not one of our numbers,” the chief explained. “It was a genuine alarm of fire, but not in our district. Of course every engine in the city does not go to every fire; each engine goes only to the fires in its own district, and we know where the fire is by the number of taps. But every engine in the city is manned and made ready to go out whenever an alarm comes. You see we cannot tell when the bell begins to tap whether it is going to be one of our numbers or not. For instance, the gong just struck three and two--thirty-two. That station is away up in Harlem, and we could hardly reach it in an hour. But the gong might have gone on and added four to the thirty-two, making 324. That would have been one of our stations, and we would have gone out. You see we were all ready on the first tap for whatever might happen.”

“Well!” Dick exclaimed, “that is a very complete system. But what I don’t understand is how the horses got out here so fast. I didn’t see anybody touch them.”

“No!” the chief laughed; “no one touched them. But I shall have to begin back at the fire itself to make that clear to you. For an easy example, we will suppose that a fire is discovered in the Astor House, and that somebody runs out and pulls the handle in the nearest alarm box, which is at Vesey Street and Broadway. The number of that box is 23, and the pulling of the handle immediately telegraphs ‘23’ to the fire headquarters in Mercer Street. A clerk sits there by the instrument, with a cabinet in front of him full of tiny drawers, each drawer containing a little brass disk notched in the side to correspond with the numbers. He takes out disk number 23 and drops it into a slot prepared for it in another instrument, and presses a button. Quick as a wink ‘23’ is telegraphed to every engine-house in the city.

“Now we come to the horses,” he continued. “That little flash of electricity does a great deal of work. It not only taps the number on our big gong, but at the same time it releases a weight which drops and pulls back the bolts that fasten the horses in their stalls, and rings a smaller gong over their heads. They are so used to the business that the instant they hear the gong they know they are free, and they start on a run for their places in front of the engine and tender. They know where to go and what to do as well as the men.”

“I like to see the horses best of all!” Dick exclaimed enthusiastically. “What noble fellows they are! But the whole thing is very complete.”

“Oh, that is only a beginning,” the chief said. “Come upstairs now till I show you where we live. You see this pole running up? It goes all the way to the roof, and is for the men to slide down when they are in a hurry. If they happen to be up above when an alarm comes, they don’t think of using the stairs but slide down the pole. It is smooth and perfectly safe. That’s what you will have to do if you want to catch the engine at night. You saw how quickly everything is done. We go out of the door in ten or eleven seconds after the first tap of the bell, day or night, and you’d never catch us if you waited for the stairs. If you get there in time, jump right up on the ash-box with the engineer and fireman at the rear of the engine. We can’t wait for you, you know.”

Dick looked critically at the slippery pole and the distance to the ground floor.

“I’ll be there,” he said confidently. “I can go down that pole as fast as anybody.”

“Now here is where the men sleep,” the chief went on; “here in the third story. Each man has his little iron bed and”--

“Tap-tap!” said the great gong and a smaller one up in the sleeping-room.

Dick did not wait for the third tap. He knew that the engine might be out of the house in ten seconds, and it was his duty to catch it.

He sprang for the pole, threw his arms around it, and slid down to the ground floor as if he had been shot out of a cannon. In a fraction of a second more he was in his place on the ash-box of the engine.

But there was none of the commotion below that he had expected to see. Instead, there came a clapping of hands and some laughter and shouts of,--

“Bravo, reporter! you’re on time!”

“Good for the newspaper man!”

“The Transport never gets left, does it?”

“You’ll do for a fireman,” said the foreman, trying hard not to laugh; “but that bell was only the twelve o’clock time signal. We don’t go out for that.”