"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report
was at least physically inadequate."
"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like
padding or faking, and I don't myself."
Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now
handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do
you think you could weld these two things together?"
"I don't know."
"Suppose you try."
"As editorial, or--"
"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here."
He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat
down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of
kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory
sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the
editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in
half an hour he handed the result to Ricker.
"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil
in his hand.
Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his
article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his
pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire
paragraphs.
When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it
now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I _must_
say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it."
Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here,
young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying
them?"
"I don't know--"
"_I_ know. I know you _didn't_. Every one of them rang false. They were
there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But
by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking
them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you
ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you
didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish;
he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on:
"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have
killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have
suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out
of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique,
and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made
any secret of my belief that you have talent."
"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The
surgeon's knife hurts though it cures.
When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the
young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and
we're not going to have any report."
"I told you it was good!"
Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said,
"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue
pencil. It's perfectly dead."
It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it
did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he
was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work,
and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was
not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its
symmetry and force, as he read and read it again.
He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter,
and had accused the structure of society. There must be something
rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning
brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our
country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their
employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and
corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our
commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that
while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in
business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create
surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of
which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the
_Abstract_ reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home,
and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was
universally believed that he had run away with other people's money
merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting
for his whereabouts.
At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit
to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a
vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the
historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and
manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a
closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the
first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions
and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and
proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout
so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote
in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical
comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had
been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and
quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young
fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it
when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt
afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere
accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for
his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their
material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and
strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all
off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised
Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or
unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he
admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one
except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane
temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the
play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the
conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred
instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted
perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the
compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the
reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact
that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without
peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for
the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers,
cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the
uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They
were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune;
they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth;
they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not
belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans
they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace
the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to
make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some
shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand
their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada.
In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than
to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those
cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to
observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon
the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker
employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of
almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black
pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was
adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the
leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the
listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife
and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on
his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and
in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to
come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same
crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this
soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there
nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected
to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to
business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned
that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle
for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had
opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment.
The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the
same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape
the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to
consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do
without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a
paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without
such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the
semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank
socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing
sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative
shape.