A CHANGE OF POLICY
The feeling of tranquillity which had come to Betty on her first
acquaintance with _Peaceful Moments_ seemed to deepen as the days
went by, and with each day she found the sharp pain at her heart less
vehement. It was still there, but it was dulled. The novelty of her
life and surroundings kept it in check. New York is an egotist. It will
suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city
imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from
their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls
unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in
New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the
City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On.
To Betty everything was new and strange. Her previous acquaintance with
the metropolis had not been extensive. Mr. Scobell's home--or, rather,
the house which he owned in America--was on the outskirts of
Philadelphia, and it was there that she had lived when she was not
paying visits. Occasionally, during horse-show week, or at some other
time of festivity, she had spent a few days with friends who lived in
Madison or upper Fifth Avenue, but beyond that, New York was a closed
book to her.
It would have been a miracle in the circumstances, if John and Mervo
and the whole of the events since the arrival of the great cable had
not to some extent become a little dream-like. When she was alone at
night, and had leisure to think, the dream became a reality once more;
but in her hours of work, or what passed for work in the office of
_Peaceful Moments_, and in the hours she spent walking about the
streets and observing the ways of this new world of hers, it faded.
Everything was so bright and busy! Every moment had its fresh interest.
And, above all, there was the sense of adventure. She was twenty-four;
she had health and an imagination; and almost unconsciously she was
stimulated by the thrill of being for the first time in her life
genuinely at large. The child's love of hiding dies hard in us. To
Betty, to walk abroad in New York in the midst of hurrying crowds, just
Betty Brown--one of four million and no longer the beautiful Miss
Silver of the society column, was to taste the romance of disguise, or
invisibility.
During office hours she came near to complete contentment. To an expert
stenographer the amount of work to be done would have seemed
ridiculously small, but Betty, who liked plenty of time for a task,
generally managed to make it last comfortably through the day.
This was partly owing to the fact that her editor, when not actually at
work himself, was accustomed to engage her in conversation, and to keep
her so engaged until the entrance of Pugsy Maloney heralded the arrival
of some caller.
Betty liked Smith. His odd ways, his conversation, and his extreme
solicitude for his clothes amused her. She found his outlook on life
refreshing. Smith was an optimist. Whatever cataclysm might occur, he
never doubted for a moment that he would be comfortably on the summit
of the debris when all was over. He amazed Betty with his stories of
his reportorial adventures. He told them for the most part as humorous
stories at his own expense, but the fact remained that in a
considerable proportion of them he had only escaped a sudden and
violent death by adroitness or pure good luck. His conversation opened
up a new world to Betty. She began to see that in America, and
especially in New York, anything may happen to anybody. She looked on
Smith with new eyes.
"But surely all this," she said one morning, after he had come to the
end of the story of a highly delicate piece of interviewing work in
connection with some Cumberland Mountains feudists, "surely all this--"
She looked round the room.
"Domesticity?" suggested Smith.
"Yes," said Betty. "Surely it all seems rather tame to you?"
Smith sighed.
"Comrade Brown," he said, "you have touched the spot with an unerring
finger."
Since Mr. Renshaw's departure, the flatness of life had come home to
Smith with renewed emphasis. Before, there had always been the quiet
entertainment of watching the editor at work, but now he was feeling
restless. Like John at Mervo, he was practically nothing but an
ornament. _Peaceful Moments_, like Mervo, had been set rolling and
had continued to roll on almost automatically. The staff of regular
contributors sent in their various pages. There was nothing for the man
in charge to do. Mr. Renshaw had been one of those men who have a
genius for being as busy over nothing as if it were some colossal work,
but Smith had not that gift. He liked something that he could grip and
that gripped him. He was becoming desperately bored. He felt like a
marooned sailor on a barren rock of domesticity.
A visitor who called at the office at this time did nothing to remove
this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living.
Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the
doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather
gloomy expression on the thickset young man's face.
Smith, too, she noted, when they were back in the inner office, seemed
to have something on his mind. He was strangely silent.
"Comrade Brown," he said at last, "I wish this little journal of ours
had a sporting page."
Betty laughed.
"Less ribaldry," protested Smith pained. "This is a sad affair. You saw
the man I was talking to? That was Kid Brady. I used to know him when I
was out West. He wants to fight anyone in the country at a hundred and
thirty-three pounds. We all have our hobbies. That is Comrade Brady's."
"Is he a boxer?"
"He would like to be. Out West, nobody could touch him. He's in the
championship class. But he has been pottering about New York for a
month without being able to get a fight. If we had a sporting page on
_Peaceful Moments_ we could do him some good, but I don't see how
we can write him up," said Smith, picking up a copy of the paper, and
regarding it gloomily, "in 'Moments in the Nursery' or 'Moments with
Budding Girlhood.'"
He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the offending journal with the
air of a vegetarian who has found a caterpillar in his salad.
Incredulity, dismay, and disgust fought for precedence in his
expression.
"B. Henderson Asher," he said severely, "ought to be in some sort of a
home. Cain killed Abel for telling him that story."
He turned to another page, and scrutinized it with deepening gloom.
"Is Luella Granville Waterman by any chance a friend of yours, Comrade
Brown? No? I am glad. For it seems to me that for sheer, concentrated
piffle, she is in a class by herself."
He read on for a few moments in silence, then looked up and fixed Betty
with his monocle. There was righteous wrath in his eyes.
"And people," he said, "are paying money for this! _Money!_ Even
now they are sitting down and writing checks for a year's subscription.
It isn't right! It's a skin game. I am assisting in a carefully planned
skin game!"
"But perhaps they like it," suggested Betty.
Smith shook his head.
"It is kind of you to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless.
I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of
poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who
ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting
buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for--how shall I
put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner?--for cat's
meat of this description. Why, selling gold bricks is honest compared
with it. And I am temporarily responsible for the black business!"
He extended a lean hand with melodramatic suddenness toward Betty. The
unexpectedness of the movement caused her to start back in her chair
with a little exclamation of surprise. Smith nodded with a kind of
mournful satisfaction.
"Exactly!" he said. "As I expected! You shrink from me. You avoid my
polluted hand. How could it be otherwise? A conscientious green-goods
man would do the same." He rose from his seat. "Your attitude," he
said, "confirms me in a decision that has been in my mind for some
days. I will no longer calmly accept this terrible position. I will try
to make amends. While I am in charge, I will give our public something
worth reading. All these Watermans and Ashers and Parslows must go!"
"Go!"
"Go!" repeated Smith firmly. "I have been thinking it over for days.
You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a
single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not
in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must
be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others,
and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance,
strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal chamber--that, unless
they cease their contributions instantly, we shall call up the police
reserves. Then we can begin to move."
Betty, like most of his acquaintances, seldom knew whether Smith was
talking seriously or not. She decided to assume, till he should dismiss
the idea, that he meant what he said.
"But you can't!" she exclaimed.
"With your kind cooperation, nothing easier. You supply the mechanical
work. I will compose the letters. First, B. Henderson Asher. 'Dear
Sir'--"
"But--" she fell back on her original remark--"but you can't. What will
Mr. Renshaw say when he comes back?"
"Sufficient unto the day. I have a suspicion that he will be the
first to approve. His vacation will have made him see things
differently--purified him, as it were. His conscience will be alive
once more."
"But--"
"Why should we worry ourselves because the end of this venture is
wrapped in obscurity? Why, Columbus didn't know where he was going to
when he set out. All he knew was some highly interesting fact about an
egg. What that was, I do not at the moment recall, but I understand it
acted on Columbus like a tonic. We are the Columbuses of the
journalistic world. Full steam ahead, and see what happens. If Comrade
Renshaw is not pleased, why, I shall have been a martyr to a good
cause. It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done,
so to speak. Why should I allow possible inconvenience to myself to
stand in the way of the happiness which we propose to inject into those
Brooklyn and Flatbush homes? Are you ready then, once more? 'Dear
Sir--'"
Betty gave in.
When the letters were finished, she made one more objection.
"They are certain to call here and make a fuss," she said, "Mr. Asher
and the rest."
"You think they will not bear the blow with manly fortitude?"
"I certainly do. And I think it's hard on them, too. Suppose they
depend for a living on what they make from _Peaceful Moments?_"
"They don't," said Smith reassuringly. "I've looked into that. Have no
pity for them. They are amateurs--degraded creatures of substance who
take the cocktails out of the mouths of deserving professionals. B.
Henderson Asher, for instance, is largely interested in gents'
haberdashery. And so with the others. We touch their pride, perhaps,
but not their purses."
Betty's soft heart was distinctly relieved by the information.
"I see," she said. "But suppose they do call, what will you do? It will
be very unpleasant."
Smith pondered.
"True," he said. "True. I think you are right there. My nervous system
is so delicately attuned that anything in the shape of a brawl would
reduce it to a frazzle. I think that, for this occasion only, we will
promote Comrade Maloney to the post of editor. He is a stern, hard,
rugged man who does not care how unpopular he is. Yes, I think that
would be best."
He signed the letters with a firm hand, "per pro P. Maloney, editor."
Then he lit a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair.
"An excellent morning's work," he said. "Already I begin to feel the
dawnings of a new self-respect."
Betty, thinking the thing over, a little dazed by the rapidity of
Smith's method of action, had found a fresh flaw in the scheme.
"If you send Mr. Asher and the others away, how are you going to bring
the paper out at all? You can't write it all yourself."
Smith looked at her with benevolent admiration.
"She thinks of everything," he murmured. "That busy brain is never
still. No, Comrade Brown, I do not propose to write the whole paper
myself. I do not shirk work when it gets me in a corner and I can't
side-step, but there are limits. I propose to apply to a few of my late
companions of Park Row, bright boys who will be delighted to come
across with red-hot stuff for a moderate fee."
"And the proprietor of the paper? Won't he make any objection?"
Smith shook his head with a touch of reproof.
"You seem determined to try to look on the dark side. Do you insinuate
that we are not acting in the proprietor's best interests? When he gets
his check for the receipts, after I have handled the paper awhile, he
will go singing about the streets. His beaming smile will be a byword.
Visitors will be shown it as one of the sights. His only doubt will be
whether to send his money to the bank or keep it in tubs and roll in
it. And anyway," he added, "he's in Europe somewhere, and never sees
the paper, sensible man."
He scratched a speck of dust off his coat-sleeve with his finger nail.
"This is a big thing," he resumed. "Wait till you see the first number
of the new series. My idea is that _Peaceful Moments_ shall become
a pretty warm proposition. Its tone shall be such that the public will
wonder why we do not print it on asbestos. We shall comment on all the
live events of the week--murders, Wall Street scandals, glove fights,
and the like, in a manner which will make our readers' spines thrill.
Above all, we shall be the guardians of the people's rights. We shall
be a spot light, showing up the dark places and bringing into
prominence those who would endeavor in any way to put the people in
Dutch. We shall detect the wrongdoer, and hand him such a series of
resentful wallops that he will abandon his little games and become a
model citizen. In this way we shall produce a bright, readable little
sheet which will make our city sit up and take notice. I think so. I
think so. And now I must be hustling about and seeing our new
contributors. There is no time to waste."