The Adventures of an Author With His Own Hero

All that day--in fact from the moment of his creation--Van Sweller had
conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make
many concessions; but in return he had been no less considerate. Once or
twice we had had sharp, brief contentions over certain points of
behavior; but, prevailingly, give and take had been our rule.

His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it
confidently.

"The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a
yawn. "I ring for a b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good
deal in the water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in
which I can receive Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat
about polo. I can talk to him through the bathroom door, or I can be
picking at a grilled bone which my man has brought in. Which would you
prefer?"

I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.

"Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when a
gentleman should--after you are fully dressed, which indubitably private
function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel indebted
to you if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are such
that it will not be necessary to inform the public, in order to appease
its apprehension, that you have taken a bath."

Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows. "Oh, very well," he said, a
trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns you more than it does me.
Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best. But it has been the usual
thing, you know."

This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apartments
in the "Beaujolie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-contested
skirmishes. I allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the question of
naming its brand. But he worsted me when I objected to giving him a
"coat unmistakably English in its cut." I allowed him to "stroll down
Broadway," and even permitted "passers by" (God knows there's nowhere to
pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze with evident admiration at
his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a barber, gave him a
"smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."

Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo team
captain, dawdling over grilled bone No. 1.

"Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him by
the collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.

"For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it
is manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is
neither dear nor old nor a boy."

To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.

"I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those words
because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are
contemptible. Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."

Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning
was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill,
and fidelity that he displayed atoned for everything.

This is the way the story runs. Van Sweller has been a gentleman member
of the "Rugged Riders," the company that made a war with a foreign
country famous. Among his comrades was Lawrence O'Roon, a man whom Van
Sweller liked. A strange thing--and a hazardous one in fiction--was that
Van Sweller and O'Roon resembled each other mightily in face, form, and
general appearance. After the war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon
was made a mounted policeman.

Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations by old
comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, unused to potent
liquids--another premise hazardous in fiction--finds the earth bucking
and bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which he may insert
foot and save his honor and his badge.

Noblesse oblige? Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths
trots Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade, as
like unto him as one French pea is unto a petit pois.

It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and social
position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police
commissioner doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not
given to scanning the countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing
unusual in the officer on the beat.

And then comes the runaway.

That is a fine scene--the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses
plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly
holding his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as
she clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone:
it has left her expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life
is not so bitter.

And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller! Oh, it
was--but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall learn
bow he sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A
Crichton, a Croesus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible
combination into the chase.

When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van
Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott's
eyes and sees two things--the possibilities of a happiness he has long
sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands
in her sight illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers
by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.

Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in
that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is
cursing his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a
West Side hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.

Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice thrillingly asking the name of
her preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved
the life of palpitating beauty in the park--where is Mounted Policeman
O'Roon, in whose territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can
the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility
and doubling the romance! But there is his friend!

Van Sweller touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily;
"that's what we are paid for--to do our duty." And away he rides. But
the story does not end there.

As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided
satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake
of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in
the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the
society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to
O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post,
which he at once did.

At about six o'clock in the afternoon Van Sweller fingered his watch,
and flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I
suspected him at once.

"Time to dress for dinner, old man," he said, with exaggerated
carelessness.

"Very well," I answered, without giving him a clew to my suspicions; "I
will go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly. I
suppose that every author must be a valet to his own hero."

He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to
accompany him. I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact
fastened deeper in my mind the conviction that he was meditating some
act of treachery.

When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patronizing
air: "There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little
distinguishing touches to be had out of the dressing process. Some
writers rely almost wholly upon them. I suppose that I am to ring for my
man, and that he is to enter noiselessly, with an expressionless
countenance."

"He may enter," I said, with decision, "and only enter. Valets do not
usually enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus's dance in
their faces; so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or
gratuitous asseveration."

"I must ask you to pardon me," continued Van Sweller, gracefully, "for
annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little new
to me. Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie--or
is there another tradition to be upset?"

"You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears.
If it is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess. And
I will leave it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess
whether a white tie is rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I
will leave it to the consciences of you and your man whether a tie that
is not white, and therefore not immaculate, could possibly form any part
of a gentleman's evening dress. If not, then the perfect tie is included
and understood in the term 'dress,' and its expressed addition
predicates either a redundancy of speech or the spectacle of a man
wearing two ties at once."

With this mild but deserved rebuke I left Van Sweller in his
dressing-room, and waited for him in his library.

About an hour later his valet came out, and I heard him telephone for an
electric cab. Then out came Van Sweller, smiling, but with that sly,
secretive design in his eye that was puzzling me.

"I believe," he said easily, as he smoothed a glove, "that I will drop
in at -----* [Footnote: See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in
the daily newspapers.] for dinner."

I sprang up, angrily, at his words. This, then, was the paltry trick he
had been scheming to play upon me. I faced him with a look so grim that
even his patrician poise was flustered.

"You will never do so," I exclaimed, "with my permission. What kind of a
return is this," I continued, hotly, "for the favors I have granted you?
I gave you a 'Van' to your name when I might have called you 'Perkins'
or 'Simpson.' I have humbled myself so far as to brag of your polo
ponies, your automobiles, and the iron muscles that you acquired when
you were stroke-oar of your 'varsity eight,' or 'eleven,' whichever it
is. I created you for the hero of this story; and I will not submit to
having you queer it. I have tried to make you a typical young New York
gentleman of the highest social station and breeding. You have no reason
to complain of my treatment to you. Amy Ffolliott, the girl you are
to win, is a prize for any man to be thankful for, and cannot be
equalled for beauty--provided the story is illustrated by the right
artist. I do not understand why you should try to spoil everything. I
had thought you were a gentleman."

"What it is you are objecting to, old man?" asked Van Sweller, in a
surprised tone.

"To your dining at---," I answered. [FOOTNOTE: See advertising column,
"Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.] "The pleasure would be
yours, no doubt, but the responsibility would fall upon me. You intend
deliberately to make me out a tout for a restaurant. Where you dine
tonight has not the slightest connection with the thread of our story.
You know very well that the plot requires that you be in front of the
Alhambra Opera House at 11:30 where you are to rescue Miss Ffolliott a
second time as the fire engine crashes into her cab. Until that time
your movements are immaterial to the reader. Why can't you dine out of
sight somewhere, as many a hero does, instead of insisting upon an
inapposite and vulgar exhibition of yourself?"

"My dear fellow," said Van Sweller, politely, but with a stubborn
tightening of his lips, "I'm sorry it doesn't please you, but there's no
help for it. Even a character in a story has rights that an author
cannot ignore. The hero of a story of New York social life must dine at
----* [*See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily
newspapers.] at least once during its action."

"'Must,'" I echoed, disdainfully; "why 'must'? Who demands it?"

"The magazine editors," answered Van Sweller, giving me a glance of
significant warning.

"But why?" I persisted.

"To please subscribers around Kankakee, Ill.," said Van Sweller, without
hesitation.

"How do you know these things?" I inquired, with sudden suspicion. "You
never came into existence until this morning. You are only a character
in fiction, anyway. I, myself, created you. How is it possible for you
to know anything?"

"Pardon me for referring to it," said Van Sweller, with a sympathetic
smile, "but I have been the hero of hundreds of stories of this kind."

I felt a slow flush creeping into my face.

"I thought..." I stammered; "I was hoping ...that is... Oh, well, of
course an absolutely original conception in fiction is impossible in
these days."

"Metropolitan types," continued Van Sweller, kindly, "do not offer a
hold for much originality. I've sauntered through every story in pretty
much the same way. Now and then the women writers have made me cut some
rather strange capers, for a gentleman; but the men generally pass me
along from one to another without much change. But never yet, in any
story, have I failed to dine at ----.*" [*Footnote: See advertising
column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.]

"You will fail this time," I said, emphatically.

"Perhaps so," admitted Van Sweller, looking out of the window into the
street below, "but if so it will be for the first time. The authors all
send me there. I fancy that many of them would have liked to accompany
me, but for the little matter of the expense."

"I say I will be touting for no restaurant," I repeated, loudly. "You
are subject to my will, and I declare that you shall not appear of
record this evening until the time arrives for you to rescue Miss
Ffolliott again. If the reading public cannot conceive that you have
dined during that interval at some one of the thousands of
establishments provided for that purpose that do not receive literary
advertisement it may suppose, for aught I care, that you have gone
fasting."

"Thank you," said Van Sweller, rather coolly, "you are hardly courteous.
But take care! it is at your own risk that you attempt to disregard a
fundamental principle in metropolitan fiction--one that is dear alike to
author and reader. I shall, of course attend to my duty when it comes
time to rescue your heroine; but I warn you that it will be your loss if
you fail to send me to-night to dine at ----.*" [Footnote: * See
advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.]

"I will take the consequences if there are to be any," I replied. "I am
not yet come to be sandwich man for an eating-house."

I walked over to a table where I had left my cane and gloves. I heard
the whirr of the alarm in the cab below and I turned quickly. Van
Sweller was gone.

I rushed down the stairs and out to the curb. An empty hansom was just
passing. I hailed the driver excitedly.

"See that auto cab halfway down the block?" I shouted. "Follow it. Don't
lose sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!"

If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself I
could easily have offered $10 or $25 or even $100. But $2 was all I felt
justified in expending, with fiction at its present rates.

The cab driver, instead of lashing his animal into a foam, proceeded at
a deliberate trot that suggested a by-the-hour arrangement.

But I suspected Van Sweller's design; and when we lost sight of his cab
I ordered my driver to proceed at once to ----.* [* See advertising
column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.]

I found Van Sweller at a table under a palm, just glancing over the
menu, with a hopeful waiter hovering at his elbow.

"Come with me," I said, inexorably. "You will not give me the slip
again. Under my eye you shall remain until 11:30."

Van Sweller countermanded the order for his dinner, and arose to
accompany me. He could scarcely do less. A fictitious character is but
poorly equipped for resisting a hungry but live author who comes to drag
him forth from a restaurant. All he said was: "You were just in time;
but I think you are making a mistake. You cannot afford to ignore the
wishes of the great reading public."

I took Van Sweller to my own rooms--to my room. He had never seen
anything like it before.

"Sit on that trunk," I said to him, "while I observe whether the
landlady is stalking us. If she is not, I will get things at a
delicatessen store below, and cook something for you in a pan over the
gas jet. It will not be so bad. Of course nothing of this will appear in
the story."

"Jove! old man!" said Van Sweller, looking about him with interest,
"this is a jolly little closet you live in! Where the devil do you
sleep?--Oh, that pulls down! And I say--what is this under the corner of
the carpet?--Oh, a frying pan! I see--clever idea! Fancy cooking over
the gas! What larks it will be!"

"Think of anything you could eat?" I asked; "try a chop, or what?"

"Anything," said Van Sweller, enthusiastically, "except a grilled bone."

Two weeks afterward the postman brought me a large, fat envelope. I
opened it, and took out something that I had seen before, and this
typewritten letter from a magazine that encourages society fiction:

Your short story, "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon," is herewith
returned.

We are sorry that it has been unfavorably passed upon; but it
seems to lack in some of the essential requirements of our
publication.

The story is splendidly constructed; its style is strong and
inimitable, and its action and character-drawing deserve the
highest praise. As a story per se it has merit beyond anything
that we have read for some time. But, as we have said, it fails
to come up to some of the standards we have set.

Could you not re-write the story, and inject into it the social
atmosphere, and return it to us for further consideration? It is
suggested to you that you have the hero, Van Sweller, drop in for
luncheon or dinner once or twice at ----* or at the ----*
[* See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily
newspapers.] which will be in line with the changes desired.
Very truly yours,
THE EDITORS.