In a moment the veil was gone from my eyes, and, grieved and angry, I
charged him with the deception. I do not like to think of what I said
or of the gentleness with which he took it. The next day, when I was
cooler, he pleaded with me to let him continue signing the name to his
articles; but I insisted that I would not permit the double use, and
the only concession he could win from me was that I would still keep
the name provided he refrained from using it again. How could I resist
his “Don, I never asked anything but this of you. I am an old man with
no possibility of a career. You are all I have to love or work for in
this world. Let me try to help you gain a name.” Oh, father, if I had
only understood, I would not have been so cruel as to deny your
request, but would have sacrificed my own honesty and allowed the lie
rather than have refused what now I know to have been so dear a wish. I
even resented what I thought a foolish joke of his, when he registered
us constantly at hotels as “Rudolph Hartzmann and father.” It is poetic
justice that in time I should stoop to so much greater dishonesty than
that which I was intolerant of in him.
Owing as much to his articles as to those I subsequently wrote, my
pseudonym became a recognized one in the world of letters, and my work
soon commanded a good price. Furthermore, considerable interest was
excited as to the author. There is a keen delight in anonymous
publication, for one does not get the one-sided chatter that
acknowledged authors receive, and often I have sat in the midst of a
group of littérateurs and scholars and heard my articles talked over. I
was tempted even to discuss one,—disparaging it, of course,—and can
remember the way my father hid his laughter when a member of the party
said, “Maitland, you ought to write an article refuting Hartzmann, for
you’ve got the knowledge to do it.” It amuses me to think how vain and
elated I became over what now I see was only ’prentice work. I am glad
you did not know me in those years of petty victory, and that before we
met I had been saddened and humbled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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