Miss Fortescue to Danvers with apparent frankness and insisted on him
devoting more time to her. Danvers persisted in his scheme boldly for a
week and then, just as Marian was despairing and was casting about for
another plan of campaign, he gave in. They were sitting apart in the
shadow near one of the windows of the ball-room. He had been sullen all
the evening, almost rude.
“How much longer are you going to keep me in suspense?” he burst out
angrily.
“In suspense?”
“You know what I mean. I think I’ve been very patient.”
“You mean our engagement?” Marian was looking at him, repelled by his
expression, his manner, the tone of his voice, his whole mood.
“Yes--I want your decision.”
“I have not changed.”
“You still love that--that newspaper fellow?”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Marian felt her irritation against Danvers
suddenly vanish and in its place a Sense of relief and of calmness. “I
mean toward you. It won’t do, Teddy. We shall get on well as friends.
But I can’t think of you in--in that way.”
Mrs. Fortescue had so swollen his vanity that he was astounded at
Marian’s decision. He rapidly went over in his mind all the advantages
he offered as a husband, and then looked at her as if he thought her
beside herself.
“Look here, Marian,” he protested. “You can’t mean it. Why, it’s all
settled that we are to marry. It would be madness for you to break
it off. I can give you everything--everything. And he can’t give you
anything.” Then with fatal tactlessness: “He won’t even give you the
little that he can, according to your own story.”
“Yes, it’s madness, isn’t it, Teddy, to refuse you--fascinating you,
who can give everything. But that’s just it. You have too much. You
overwhelm me. I should feel like a cheat, taking so much and giving so
little.”
“Don’t,” he begged, his self-complacence and superiority all gone.
“Don’t mind my blundering, please, dear. I want you. I can’t say it. I
haven’t any gift of words. But you’ve known me all my life and you know
that I love you. I’ve set my heart on it, Mary Ann,”--it was the name
he used to tease her with when they were children playing together--“You
won’t go back on me now, will you?”
“I wish I could do as you wish, Teddy.” Marian was forgetful of
everything but the unhappiness she was causing this friend of so many,
many years and of so many, many memories. “But I can’t--I can’t.”
“Marry me, dear, anyhow. You will care afterward.” Marian was silent and
Danvers hoped. “You know all about me. I’ll not give you any surprises.
I shan’t bother you. And I’ll make you happy.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You mustn’t ask it. I’ll tell you why. I have
thought of marrying you regardless of this. Only last night I thought of
it--finally, went over the whole thing. Listen, Teddy--if I were married
to you--and if he should come--and he would come sooner or later--if
he should come and say ‘Come with me,’--I’d go--yes, I’m sure I’d go.
I can’t explain why. But I know that nothing would stand in the
way--nothing.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Marian shrank from him. She was
horrified by the malignant fury that sparkled in his eyes and raged in
his voice. “That damned scoundrel is worthy of you and you of him. But
I’ll get you yet. I never was crossed in anything in my life and I’ll
not be beaten here.”
“And I thought you were my friend!” Marian was looking at him, pale, her
eyes wide with amazement. “Is it really you?”
He laughed insolently. “Yes--you’ll see. And he’ll see. I’ll crush him
as if he were an egg shell. And as for you--you perjurer--you liar!”
He looked at her with coarse contempt, rose and stalked away. Marian sat
rigid. She was conscious of the insult. But even that humiliation was
not so strong in her mind as the astounding revelation of Danvers. She
remembered that even as his eyes blazed hatred at her, he looked at her,
at her neck, her bare arms, with the baffled desire of brute passion.
She did not fully understand the look, but she felt that it was a
degradation far greater than his insulting words.
She slipped, almost skulked to her room, her eyes down, her face in
a burning flush, her scarf drawn tightly about her neck. As her door
closed behind her, she fell upon her bed and began to sob hysterically.
She started up with a scream to find her cousin standing beside her.
“I’m so sorry. Forgive me.” Mrs. Carnarvon’s voice had lost its wonted
levity. “I saw that you were in trouble and followed. I knocked and
I thought I heard you answer. What is it, Marie? May I ask? Can I do
anything?”
Marian drew her down to the bed and buried her face in her lap. “Oh,
I feel so unclean,” she said. “It was--Teddy. Would you believe it,
Jessie, Teddy! I looked on him as a brother. And he showed me that he
was not my friend--that he didn’t even love me--that he--oh, I shall
never forget the look in his eyes. He made me feel like a--like a
_thing_.”
Mrs. Carnarvon smothered a smile. “Of course Teddy’s a brute,” she said.
“I thought you knew. He’s a domesticated brute, like most of the men and
some of the women. You’ll have to get used to that.”
By refusing to fall in with her mood, Mrs. Carnarvon had gone far toward
curing it. Marian stopped sobbing and presently said:
“Oh, I know all that. But I didn’t expect it from Teddy--and toward me.
And--” she shuddered--“I was thinking, actually thinking of marrying
him. I wish never to see him again. And he pretended to be my friend!”
“And he was, no doubt, until he got you on the brain in another way, in
the way he calls love. There isn’t any love that has friendship in it.”
“We must go away at once.”
“Unless Teddy saves us the trouble by going first, as I suspect he
will.”
“Jessie, he hates me and--and--Mr. Howard.”
“So you talked to him about Howard again, did you?” Mrs. Carnarvon
was indignant. “You are old enough to know better, Marian. You carry
frankness entirely too far. There is such a thing as truth running
amuck.”
“He said he would crush Howard. And I believe he really meant it.”
“Teddy is a man who believes in revenges--or thinks he does. His father
taught him to keep accounts in grievances, and no doubt he has opened an
account with Howard. But don’t be disturbed about it. His father would
have insisted on balancing the account. Teddy will just keep on hating,
but won’t do anything. He’s not underhanded.”
“He’s everything that is vile and low.”
“You’re quite mistaken, my dear. He’s what they call a manly fellow--a
little too masculine perhaps, but----”
A knock interrupted and Mrs. Carnarvon, answering it, took from the
bell-boy a note for Marian who read it, then handed it to her. Mrs.
Carnarvon read: “I apologise for the way I said what I did this evening,
not for what I said. Because you had forgotten yourself, had played the
traitor and the cheat was, perhaps, no excuse for my rudeness. You have
fallen under an evil influence. I hope no harm will come to you, for I
can’t get over my feeling for you. But I have done my best and have not
been able to save you. I am going away early in the morning.
“E. D.”
“Melodramatic, isn’t it?” laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. “So he’s off. How
furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they’ll go in pursuit,
and they’ll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he’s
broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don’t mope and whine.
Take your punishment sensibly. You’ve learned something--if it’s only
not to tell one man how much you love another.”
“I think I’ll go abroad with Aunt Retta next month.”
“A good idea--you’ll forget both these men. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” answered Marian dolefully, expecting to resume her
thoughts of Danvers. But, instead, he straightway disappeared from
her mind and she could think only of Howard. She was free now. The one
barrier between him and her of which she had been really conscious was
gone. And her heart began to ache with longing for him. Why had he not
written? What was he doing? Did he really love her or was his passion
for her only a flash of a strong and swift imagination?
No, he loved her--she could not doubt that. But she could not understand
his conduct. She felt that she ought to be very unhappy, yet she was
not. The longer she thought of him and the more she weighed his words
and looks, the stronger became her trust in him. “He loves me,” she
said. “He will come when he can. It may be even harder for him than for
me.”
And so, explanation failing--for she rejected every explanation that
reflected upon him--she hid and excused him behind that familiar refuge
of the doubting, mystery.
XIV.
THE NEWS-RECORD GETS A NEW EDITOR.
A few minutes after leaving Marian that last night at Mrs. Carnarvon’s,
Howard was deep in a mood of self-contempt. He felt that he had faced
the crisis like a coward. He despised the weakness which enfeebled him
for effort to win her and at the same time made it impossible for him to
thrust her from his mind.
In the working hours his will conquered with the aid of fixed habit and
he was able to concentrate upon his editorials. But in his rooms, and
especially after the lights were out, his imagination became master,
deprived him of sleep and occasionally lifted him to a height of hope
in order that it might dash him down the more cruelly upon the rocks of
fact.
At last he was forced to face the situation--in his own evasive fashion.
It was impossible to go back. That loneliness which often threatened him
after Alice’s death had become the permanent condition of his life. “I
will work for her,” he said. “Until I have made a place for her I dare
not claim her. So much I will concede to my weakness. But when I have
won a position which reasonably assures the future, I shall claim
her--no matter what has happened in the meanwhile.”
He would have smiled at this wild resolution had he been in a less
distracted state of mind or had he been dealing with any other than a
matter of love. But in the circumstances it gave him heart and set him
to work with an energy and effectiveness which still further increased
Mr. Malcolm’s esteem for him.
“Will you dine with me at the Union Club on Wednesday?” Mr. Malcolm
asked one morning in mid-February. “Mr. Coulter and Mr. Stokely are
coming. I want you to know them better.”
Howard accepted and wondered that he took so little interest.
For Stokely and Coulter were the principal stockholders of the
_News-Record_, and with Malcolm formed the triumvirate which directed it
in all its departments. Mr. Malcolm held only a few shares of stock,
but received what was in the newspaper-world an immense salary--thirty
thousand a year. He was at once an able editor and an able diplomatist.
He knew how to make the plans of his two associates conform to
conditions of news and policy--when to let them use the paper, or,
rather, when to use the paper himself for their personal interests; when
and how to induce them to let the paper alone. Through a quarter of a
century of changing ownerships Malcolm had persisted, chiefly because
he had but one conviction--that the post of editor of the _News-Record_
exactly suited him and must remain his at any sacrifice of personal
character.
Howard had met Stokely and Coulter. He liked Stokely who was owner of a
few shares more than one-third; he disliked Coulter who owned just under
one-half.
Stokely was a frank, coarse, dollar-hunter, cheerfully unscrupulous in a
large way, acute, caring not at all for principles of any kind, letting
the paper alone most of the time because he was astute enough to know
that in his ignorance of journalism he would surely injure it as a
property.
Coulter was a hypocrite and a snob. Also he fancied he knew how to
conduct a newspaper. He was as unscrupulous as Stokely but tried to mask
it.
When Stokely wished the _News-Record_ to advocate a “job,” or steal, or
the election of some disreputable who would work in his interest,
he told Malcolm precisely what he wanted and left the details of the
stultification to his experienced adroitness. When Coulter wished
to “poison the fountain of publicity,” as Malcolm called the paper’s
departures from honesty and right, he approached the subject by stealth,
trying to convince Malcolm that the wrong was not really wrong, but was
right unfortunately disguised.
He would take Malcolm into his confidence by slow and roundabout
steps, thus multiplying his difficulties in discharging his “duty.” If
Coulter’s son had not been married to Malcolm’s daughter, it is probable
that not even his complete subserviency would have enabled him to keep
his place.
“If you had told me frankly what you wanted in the first place, Mr.
Coulter,” he said after an exasperating episode in which Coulter’s
Pharisaic sensitiveness had resulted in Malcolm’s having to “flop” the
paper both editorially and in its news columns twice in three days, “we
would not have made ourselves ridiculous and contemptible. The public
is an ass, but it is an ass with a memory at least three days long. Your
stealthiness has made the ass bray at us instead of with and for us.
And that is dangerous when you consider that running a newspaper is like
running a restaurant--you must please your customers every day afresh.”
Coulter was further difficult because of his anxieties about social
position for himself and his family. He was disturbed whenever the
_News-Record_ published an item that might offend any of the people
whose acquaintance he had gained with so much difficulty, and for
whose good will he was willing to sacrifice even considerable
money. Personally, but very privately, he edited the _News-Record’s_
“fashionable intelligence” columns on Sunday and made them an exhibit of
his own sycophancy and snobbishness which excited the amused disgust of
all who were in the secret.
Malcolm liked Howard, admired him, in a way envied his fearlessness, his
earnestness for principles. For years he had had it in mind to retire
and write a history of the Civil War period which had been his own
period of greatest activity and most intimate acquaintance with the
behind-the-scenes of statecraft. Howard’s energy, steady application,
enthusiasm for journalism and intelligence both as to editorials and as
to news made Malcolm look upon him as his natural successor.
“I think Howard is the man we want,” he said to his two associates when
he was arranging the dinner. “He has new ideas--just what the paper
needs. He is in touch with these recent developments. And above all he
has judgment. He knows what not to print, where and how to print what
ought to be printed. He is still young and is over-enthusiastic. He has
limitations, but he knows them and he is eager and capable to learn.”
It was a “shop” dinner, Howard doing most of the talking, led on by
Malcolm. The main point was the “new journalism,” as it was called, and
how to adapt it to the _News-Record_ and the _News-Record_ to it.
Malcolm kept the conversation closely to news and news-ideas, fearing
that, if editorial policies were brought in, Howard would make “breaks.”
He soon saw that his associates were much impressed with Howard, with
his judgment, with his knowledge of the details of every important
newspaper in the city, with his analysis of the good and bad points in
each.
“I’ll drop you at your corner,” said he to Howard at the end of the
dinner. As they drove up the Avenue he began: “How would you like to be
the editor of the _News-Record_? My place, I mean.”
“I don’t understand,” Howard answered, bewildered.
“I am going to retire at once,” Malcolm went on. “I’ve been at it nearly
fifty years--ever since I was a boy of eighteen and I’ve been in charge
there almost a quarter of a century. I think I’ve earned a few years of
leisure to work for my own amusement. I’m pretty sure they’ll want you
to take my place. Would you like it?”
“I’m not fit for it,” Howard said, and he meant it. “I’m only an
apprentice. I’m always making blunders--but I needn’t tell you about
that.”
“You can’t say that you are not fit until you have tried. Besides, the
question is not, are _you_ fit? but, is there any one more fit than you?
I confess I don’t see any one so well equipped, so certain to give the
paper all of the best that there is in him.”
“Of course I’d like to try. I can only fail.”
“Oh, you won’t fail. But you may quarrel with Stokely and
Coulter--especially Coulter. In fact, I’m sure you’ll quarrel with
them. But if you make yourself valuable enough, you’ll probably win out.
Only----”
Malcolm hesitated, then went on:
“I stopped giving advice years ago. But I’ll venture a suggestion.
Whenever your principles run counter to the policy of the paper, it
would be wise to think the matter over carefully before making an issue.
Usually there is truth on both sides, much that can be said fairly
and honestly for either side. Often devotion to principle is a mere
prejudice. Often the crowd, the mob, can be better controlled to right
ends by conceding or seeming to concede a principle for the time. Don’t
strike a mortal blow at your own usefulness to good causes by making
yourself a hasty martyr to some fancied vital principle that will seem
of no consequence the next morning but one after the election.”
“I know, Mr. Malcolm, judgment is all but impossible. And I have been
trying to learn what you have been teaching me with your blue pencil,
what you now put into words. But there is something in me--an instinct,
perhaps--that forces me on in spite of myself. I’ve learned to curb and
guide it to a certain extent, but as long as I am I, I shall never learn
to control it. Every man must work out his own salvation along his own
lines. And with my limitations of judgment, it would be fatal to me, I
feel, to study the art of compromise. Where another, broader, stronger,
more master of himself and of others, would succeed by compromising, I
should fail miserably. I should be lost, compassless, rudderless. I have
often envied you your calmness, your ability to see not only to-morrow
but the day after. But, if I ever try to imitate you, I shall make a sad
mess of my career.”
As he ended Howard looked uneasily at the old editor, expecting to see
that caustic smile with which he preceded and accompanied his sarcasms
at “sentimental bosh.” But instead, Malcolm’s face was melancholy; and
his voice was sad and weary as he answered the young man who was just
starting where he had started so many years ago:
“No doubt you are right. I’m not intending to try to dissuade you
from--from the best there is in you. All I mean is that caution,
self-examination, self-doubt, calm consideration of the other
side--these are as necessary to success as energy and resolute action.
All I suggest is that its splendour does not redeem a splendid folly.
Its folly remains its essential characteristic.”
Three weeks later Howard became editor-in-chief of the _News-Record_.
His salary was fifteen thousand a year; and Stokely and Coulter, acting
upon Malcolm’s advice, gave him a “free hand” for one year. They agreed
not to interfere during that time unless the circulation or the profits
showed a decrease at the end of a quarter.
The next morning Howard, in the Madison Avenue car on his way to the
office, read among the “Incidents in Society:”
Mrs. George Alexander Provost and her niece, Miss Marion Trevor, sailed
in the _Campania_ yesterday. They will return in July for the Newport
season.
XV.
YELLOW JOURNALISM.
While several of the New York dailies were circulating from two to three
hundred thousand copies, the _News-Record_--the best-written, the most
complete, and, where the interests of the owners did not interfere, the
most accurate--circulated less than one hundred thousand. The Sunday
edition had a circulation of one hundred and fifty thousand where two
other newspapers had almost half a million.
The theory of the _News-Record_ staff was that their journal was too
“respectable,” too intelligent, to be widely read; that the “yellow
journals” grovelled, “appealed to the mob,” drew their vast crowds by
the methods of the fakir and the freak. They professed pride in the
_News-Record’s_ smaller circulation as proof of its freedom from
vulgarity and debasement. They looked down upon the journalists of the
popular newspapers and posed as the aristocracy of the profession.
Howard did not assent to these self-complacent excuses. He was
democratic and modern, and the aristocratic pose appealed only to his
sense of humour and his suspicions. He believed that the success of
the “yellow journals” with the most intelligent, alert and progressive
public in the world must be based upon solid reasons of desert, must be
in spite of, not because of, their follies and exhibitions of bad taste.
He resolved upon a radical departure, a revolution from the policy of
satisfying petty vanity and tradition within the office to a policy of
satisfying the demands of the public.
He gave Segur temporary charge of the editorial page, and, taking a desk
in the news-room, centred his attention upon news and the news-staff.
But he was careful not to agitate and antagonise those whose coöperation
was necessary to success. He made only one change in the management; he
retired old Bowring on a pension and appointed to the city editorship
one of the young reporters--Frank Cumnock.
He chose Cumnock for this position, in many respects the most important
on the staff of a New York daily, because he wrote well, was a judge of
good writing, had a minute knowledge of New York and its neighbourhood
and, finally and chiefly, because he had a “news-sense,” keener than
that of any other man on the paper.
For instance, there was the murder of old Thayer, the rich miser in East
Sixteenth Street. It was the sensation in all the newspapers for two
weeks. Then they dropped it as an unsolvable mystery. Cumnock persuaded
Mr. Bowring to let him keep on. After five days’ work he heard of a
deaf and dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window of her flat
overlooking the back windows of Thayer’s house. He had a trying struggle
with her infirmity and stupidity, but finally was rewarded. On the
afternoon of the murder, in its very hour (which the police had been
able to discover), she had seen a man and woman in the bathroom of the
Thayer house. Both were agitated and the man washed his hands again
and again, carefully rinsing the bowl afterward. From her description
Cumnock got upon the track of Thayer’s niece and her husband, found the
proof of their guilt, had them watched until the _News-Record_ came out
with the “beat,” then turned them over to the police.
Also, Cumnock was keen at taking hints of good news-items concealed in
obscure paragraphs. The Morris Prison scandal was an example of this. He
found in the New England edition of _The World_ a six-line item giving
an astonishing death rate for the Morris Prison. He asked the City
Editor to assign him to go there; and within a week the press of the
entire country was discussing the _News-Record’s_ exposure of the
barbarities of torture and starvation practised by Warden Johnson and
his keepers.
“We are going to print the news, all the news and nothing but the news,”
Howard said to Cumnock. “They’ve put you here because, so they tell me,
you know news no matter how thoroughly it is concealed or disguised.
And I assure you that no one shall interfere with you. No favours to
anybody; no use of the news-columns for revenge or exploitation. The
only questions a news-item need raise in your mind are: Is it true?
Is it interesting? Is it printable in a newspaper that will publish
anything which a healthy-minded grown-person wishes to read?”
“Is that ‘straight’?” asked Cumnock. “No favourites? No suppressions? No
exploitations?”
“‘Straight’--‘dead straight’! And if I were you I’d make this
particularly clear to the Wall Street and political men. If
anybody”--with stress upon the anybody--“comes to you about this, send
him to me.”
Howard was uneasy about the managing editor, Mr. King. But he soon found
that his fears were groundless. Mr. King was without petty vanity, and
cordially and sincerely welcomed his control.
“We look too dull,” King began when Howard asked him if he had any
changes to suggest. “We need more and bigger headlines, and we need
pictures.”
“That is it!” Howard was delighted to find that King and he were in
perfect accord. “But we must not have pictures unless we can have the
best. Just at present we can’t increase expenses by any great amount.
What do you say to trying what we can do with all the news, larger
headlines and plenty of leads?”