In my room I eagerly wrote it all down and added what I myself could remember. Here from my bedroom window I tried to see what I had seen as a boy, the immaculate white of the tall sails, the fresh blue and green of the dancing waves. Oh, I was romancing finely those nights! And there came no Blessed Damozel to say to me gruffly, "Couches-toi. Il est tard."
When the sketch was completed at last I gave it to my father to read and then went out for a long walk. It was nearly midnight when I returned, but he was still reading. He cleared his throat.
"Son," he said very huskily, "this is a strong piece of work!" His eyes were moist as they moved rapidly down the page. He looked up with a jerk. "Who'll print it?" he asked.
I mailed it that night to a magazine. In the next two weeks my father's suspense was even deeper than my own, though he tried hard to joke about it, calling me "Pendennis." One day in his office chair he wheeled with a nervous sharpness, and I could feel his eyes fixed on the envelope which the postman had just thrown on my desk. God help me, it was heavy and long, it had my manuscript inside. Dismally I searched for a letter. Still I could feel those anxious eyes.
"Hold on!" I cried. "They've taken it! All they want me to do is to cut it down!"
"Then do it!" My radiant father snarled. "It ought to be cut to half its length! That's the way with beginners, a mass of details! Some day maybe you'll learn to write!"
I smiled happily back. He came suddenly over and gripped my hand.
"My boy, I'm glad, I'm very glad! I'm"--he cleared his throat and went back to his desk and tried to scowl over what he was doing.
"They say they'll give me a hundred dollars. Pretty good for one month's work."
"And they want me to do some more on the harbor. They say it's a new field. Never been touched."
"Then touch it," he said gruffly. "Leave me alone. I'm busy."
But coming in late after luncheon that day, I found him reading the editor's letter.
"Boy," he said that evening, "you ought to read Thackeray for style, and Washington Irving, and see what a whippersnapper you are. Work--work! If your mother were only alive she could help you!"
And just before bedtime, taking a bottle of beer with my pipe, I caught his disapproving eye.