“Very well. I’ll keep ‘em out.”
Howard flushed and called him back. “Go ahead,” he said. “Write just
what you were going to. Of course you wouldn’t write anything that was
not fair and truthful. We don’t ‘play favourites’ here. Forget what I
said.”
And so it came to pass that Mrs. Provost, half pleased, half indignant,
said to Miss Trevor as they sat in the drawing room of the Pullman on
the way to Newport the next day: “Just look at this, Marian dear, in
the horrid _News-Record_. And it used to be such a nice paper with that
slimy Coulter bowing and scraping to everybody.”
“This” was Mrs. Provost and her dogs and her maids and her asides
to “Marian dear,” described with accuracy and a keen sense of the
ludicrous.
“It’s too dreadful,” she continued. “There is no such thing as privacy
in this country. The newspapers are making us,” with a slight accent on
the pronoun, “as common and public as tenement-house people.”
“Yes,” Miss Trevor answered absently. “But why read the newspapers? I
never could get interested in them, though I’ve tried.”
XVII.
A WOMAN AND A WARNING.
On the evening of Howard’s arrival at Newport, Mrs. Carnarvon was having
a few people in to dine. He had just time to dress and so saw no one
until he descended to the reception room.
“You are to take in Marian,” said his hostess, going with him to
where Miss Trevor was sitting, her back to the door and her attention
apparently absorbed by the man facing her.
“Here’s Mr. Howard, Marian,” Mrs. Carnarvon interrupted. “Come with me,
Willie. Your lady is over here and we’re going in directly.”
Marian saw that Howard was looking at her in the straight, frank fashion
she remembered and liked so well. “I’ve come for you,” he said.
“Yes, you are to take me in,” she evaded, her look even lamer than her
words.
“You know what I mean.” He was smiling, his heart in his eyes, as if the
dozen people were not about them.
“I see you have not changed,” she laughed, answering his look in kind.
“Changed? I’m revolutionized. I was blind and now I see. I was paralyzed
and behold, I walk. I was weak and lo, I am strong--strong enough for
two, if necessary.”
“Now, hasn’t it occurred to you that I might possibly have something to
say about my own fate?”
“You? Why, you had everything to say. I reasoned it all out with you.
You simply can’t add anything to the case I made you make out for
yourself when I talked it over with you. I made you protest very
vigorously.”
“Well, what did I say--that is, what did you make me say?”
“You said you were engaged--pledged to another--that you could not draw
back without dishonour. And I answered that no engagement could bind you
to become the wife of a man you did not love; that no moral code could
hold you to such a sin; that no code of honour could command you to
permit a man to degrade himself and you. Then you pleaded that you were
not sure you liked my kind of a life, that you feared you wanted wealth
and a great establishment and social leadership and--and all that.”
“Did I?” Marian said with exaggerated astonishment.
“You did indeed. You were perfectly open with me. You let me see
all that part of you which we try to keep concealed and fancy we
are concealing--all that one really feels and wishes and thinks as
distinguished from what one fancies he ought to feel and wish and
think.”
“I wonder that you cared, after a glance behind that curtain.”
“Oh, but I like what is behind that curtain best of all. The very human
things are there. They make me feel so at home.”
Dinner was announced and it was not until the second course that he had
a chance to resume. Then he began as if there had been no interval:
“You said--”
Marian laughed and looked at him--a flash of her luminous blue-green
eyes--and was looking away again with her usual expression. “You needn’t
tell me the rest. It doesn’t matter what I said. I’ve had you with me
wherever I went. You never doubted my--my caring, did you?”
“No. I couldn’t doubt you. If you were the sort of woman a man could
doubt, you wouldn’t be the sort of woman I could love. And you know it
isn’t vanity that makes me sure. I often wonder how you happened to care
for such a--but I must not attack any one whom you like so well. No, I
knew you cared by the same instinct that makes you know that I care for
you.”
“But why did you come?”
“Because I have won a position for myself, have enough to enable us to
live without eternally fretting over money-matters. I feel that I
have the right to come. And then I could not be interested to live on,
without you; and I’m willing to face, willing to have you face, whatever
may come to us through me. I know that you and I together----”
“Not now--don’t--please.” Marian was pale and she was obviously under a
great strain. “You see, you knew all about this. But I didn’t until you
looked at me when Jessie brought you. It makes me--happy--I am so happy.
But I must--I can’t control myself here.” She leaned over as if her
napkin had slipped to the floor. “I love you,” she murmured.
It was Howard’s turn to struggle for self-control. “I understand,” he
said, “why you wished me not to go on. You never said those words to me
before--and----”
“Oh, yes I have--many and many a time.”
“With your eyes, but not with your voice--at least not so that I could
hear. And--well, it is not easy to look calm and only friendly when
every nerve in one’s body is vibrating like a violin string under
the bow. Yes, let us talk of something else. I’ve never been acutely
conscious of the presence of others when I’ve been with you. To-night
I’m in great danger of forgetting them altogether.”
“That would be so like you.” Marian laughed, then raised her voice a
little and went on. “Yes, your little restaurant in the Rue Louis le
Grand was gone. There was a dressmaker in its place--Raudinitz. She made
this. How do you like it?”
“It has the air of--of belonging to you.”
Marian looked amused. Howard shrugged his shoulders. “All roads lead to
Rome,” he said.
* * * * *
Carnarvon hung about until the women went to bed, so Howard and Marian
had no opportunity to be alone. As soon as he saw his last chance
vanish, he went to his own room, to the solitude of its balcony in the
shadow of the projecting facade with the moonlight flooding the rocks
and the sea.
As he sat smoking, the recession came, the reaction from weeks of
nervous tension. And with the ebb of the tide entered that Visitor who
alone has the privilege of the innermost chamber where lives the man
himself, unmasked of all vanity and show and pretense. The visit was not
unexpected; for at every such crisis every one is certain of a call from
this Visitor, this merciless critic, plain and rude of speech, rare and
reluctant in praise, so mocking in our moments of elation, so cruelly
frank about our follies and self-excuses when he comes in our moments of
depression.
“So you are going to marry?” the Visitor said abruptly. “I thought you
had made up your mind on that subject long ago.”
“Love changes a man’s point of view,” Howard replied, timid and
apologetic before this quiet, relentless other-self.
“But it doesn’t change the facts of life, does it? It doesn’t change
character, does it?”
“I think so. For instance, it has changed me. It has made a man of me.
It has been the inspiration of the past year, strengthening me, making
me ambitious, energetic. Have I not thought of her all the time, worked
for her?”
“You have been uncommonly persistent--as you always are when you
are thwarted.” The Visitor wore a satirical smile. “But a spurt of
inspiration is one thing. A wife--responsibility--fetters----”
“Not when one loves.”
“That depends upon the kind of love--and the kind of woman--and the kind
of man.”
“Could there be any higher kind of love than ours?”
“Most romantic, most high-minded--quite idyllic.” The Visitor’s tone
was gently mocking. “And I don’t deny that you may go on loving each the
other. But--how does she fit in with your scheme of life? What does
she really know of or care about your ambitions? Why, you had so little
confidence in her that you didn’t dare to think of marrying her until
you had an income which you once would have thought wealth--an income
which, by the way, already begins to seem small to you.”
“No, it wasn’t lack of confidence in her,” protested Howard. “It was
lack of confidence in myself.”
“True, that did have something to do with it, I grant you. And that
reminds me--what has become of all your cowardice about responsibility?”
“Oh, I’m changed there.”
“Are you sure? Are you not deceived by this sudden and maybe momentary
streak of good luck in your affairs? You have fixed your ambition
high--very high. You wish to make an honest and a useful and a
distinguished career. You know you have weaknesses. I needn’t remind
you--need I--that you have had to fight those weaknesses? How could
you have won thus far if you had been responsible for others instead of
being alone, and certain that the consequences would fall upon yourself
only? I want to see you continue to win. I don’t want to see you dragged
down by extravagance, by love for this woman, by ambition of the kind
her friends approve. I don’t want to see you--You were silent when
Stokely insulted you!”
“Love--such love as mine--and for such a woman--and with such love in
return--drag down? Impossible!”
“Not so--not exactly so, though I must say you are plausible. But don’t
forget that you and she are not starting out to make a career. Don’t
forget that she is already fixed--her tastes, habits, friendships,
associations, ideals already formed. Don’t forget that your love is the
only bond between you--and that it may drag you toward her mode of
life instead of drawing her towards yours. Don’t forget that your own
associations and temptations are becoming more and more difficult. I
repeat, you cringed--yes, cringed--when Stokely insulted you. Why?”
Howard was silent.
“And,” the Visitor went on relentlessly, “let me remind you that not
only did you give her up without a struggle a few months ago but also
she gave you up without a word.”
“But what could she have said?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I’m not familiar with ways feminine. But I
know--we know--that, if there had not been some reservation in her love,
some hesitation about you--unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to
make her yield--she would not have let you go as she did.”
“But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us.”
“Perhaps--that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you
really so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you
stimulated by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come?
What then?”
“But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large
salary--perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary.”
“Perhaps--if you don’t trouble yourself about principles. But how would
it be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is
honest? Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly,
have you the right to assume a responsibility you may not be able to
bear, to invite temptations you may not be able to resist?”
There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar
into the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.
“God in heaven!” he cried, “am I not human? May I not have companionship
and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless
always? That is not life; that is not just. I will not; I will not. I
love her--love her--love her. With the best that there is in me, I love
her. Am I such a coward that I cannot face even my own weaknesses?”
XVIII.
HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.
In August Marian and Mrs. Carnarvon came to the Waldorf for two days.
Howard had offered to show them how a newspaper is made; and Mrs.
Carnarvon, finding herself bored by too many days of the same few people
every day, herself proposed the trip. The three dined in the open air on
Sherry’s piazza and at eleven o’clock drove down the Avenue, to the east
at Washington Square, and through the Bowery.
“I never saw it before,” said Marian, “and I must say I shall not care
if I never see it again. Why do people make so much fuss about slums, I
wonder?”
“Oh, they’re so queer, so like another world,” suggested Mrs. Carnarvon.
“It gives you such a delightful sensation of sadness. It’s just like a
not-too-melancholy play, only better because it’s real. Then, too, it
makes one feel so much more comfortable and clean and contented in one’s
own surroundings.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jessie.” Marian spoke in mock
indignation. “The next thing we know you’ll sink to being a patron of
the poor and go about enjoying yourself at making them self-conscious
and envious.”
“They’re not at all sad down this way,” said Howard, “except in the
usual inescapable human ways. When they’re not hit too hard, they bear
up wonderfully. You see, living on the verge of ruin and tumbling over
every few weeks get one used to it. It ceases to give the sensation of
event.”
Their automobile had turned into Park Row and so reached the
_News-Record_ building in Printing House Square. Howard took the
two women to the elevator and they shot upward in a car crowded with
telegraph messengers, each carrying one or more envelopes, some of them
bearing in bold black type the words: “News!--Rush!”
“I suppose that is the news for the paper?” Mrs. Carnarvon asked.
“A little of it. Our special cable and special news from towns to which
we have no direct wire and also the _Associated Press_ reports come this
way. But we don’t use much _Associated Press_ matter, as it is the same
for all the papers.”
“What do you do with it?”
“Throw it away. A New York newspaper throws away every night enough to
fill two papers and often enough to fill five or six.”
“Isn’t that very wasteful?”
“Yes, but it’s necessary. Every editor has his own idea of what to print
and what not to print and how much space each news event calls for. It
is there that editors show their judgment or lack of it. To print the
things the people wish to read in the quantities the people like and in
the form the most people can most easily understand--that is success as
an editor.”
“No doubt,” said Marian, thinking of the low view all her friends
took of Howard’s newspaper, “if you were making a newspaper to please
yourself, you would make a very different one.”
“Oh, no,” laughed Howard, “I print what I myself like; that is, what I
like to find in a newspaper. We print human news made by human beings
and interesting to human beings. And we don’t pretend to be anything
more than human. We try never to think of our own idea of what the
people ought to read, but always to get at what the people themselves
think they ought to read. We are journalists, not news-censors.”
“I must say newspapers do not interest me.” Marian confessed it a little
diffidently.
“You are probably not interested,” Howard answered, “because you don’t
care for news. It is a queer passion--the passion for news. The public
has it in a way. But to see it in its delirium you must come here.”
“This seems quiet enough.” Marian looked about Howard’s upstairs office.
It was silent, and from the windows one could see New York and its
rivers and harbour, vast, vague, mysterious, animated yet quiet.
“Oh, I rarely come here--a few hours a week,” Howard replied. “On this
floor the editorial writers work.” He opened a door leading to a private
hall. There were five small rooms. In each sat a coatless man, smoking
and writing. One was Segur, and Howard called to him.
“Are you too busy to look after Mrs. Carnarvon and Miss Trevor for a few
minutes? I must go downstairs.”
Segur gave some “copy” to a boy who handed him a bundle of proofs and
rushed away down a narrow staircase. Howard descended in the elevator,
and Segur, who had put on his coat, sat talking to the two women as he
looked through the proofs, glancing at each narrow strip, then letting
it drop to the floor.
“You don’t mind my working?” he asked. “I have to look at these things
to see if there is any news that calls for editional attention. If I
find anything and can think an editorial thought about it, I write it;
and if Howard is in the humour, perhaps the public is permitted to read
it.”
“Is he severe?” asked Mrs. Carnarvon.
“The ‘worst ever,’” laughed Segur. “He is very positive and likes only
a certain style and won’t have anything that doesn’t exactly fit his
ideas. He’s easy to get along with but difficult to work for.”
“I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success.” Marian knew
that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she couldn’t
endure hearing him criticised.
“No. I think he succeeds because he works, pushes straight on, never
stops to repair blunders but never makes the same kind of a blunder the
second time.”
Segur’s eye caught an item that suggested an editorial paragraph. He
sat at Howard’s desk, thought a moment, scrawled half a dozen lines in
a large ragged hand on a sheet of ruled yellow paper, and pressed
an electric button. The boy came, handed him another thick bundle of
proofs, took the “copy” and withdrew. Just then Howard returned.
“We’ll go down to the news-room,” he said.
The windows of the great news-room were thrown wide. Scores of electric
lights made it bright. At the various desks or in the aisles were
perhaps fifty men, most of them young, none of them beyond middle age.
They were in every kind of clothing from the most fashionable summer
attire to an old pair of cheap and stained duck trousers, collarless
negligee shirt open all the way down the front and suspenders hanging
about the hips.
Some were writing long-hand; others were pounding away at the
typewriter; others were talking in undertones to “typists” taking
dictation to the machine; others were reading “copy” and altering it
with huge blue pencils which made apparently unreadable smears wherever
they touched the paper. In and out skurried a dozen office-boys,
responding to calls from various desks, bringing bundles of proofs,
thrusting copy into boxes which instantly and noisily shot up through
the ceiling.
It was a scene of confusion and furious activity. The face of each
individual was calm and his motions by themselves were not excited. But
taking all together and adding the tense, strained expression underneath
the calm--the expression of the professional gambler--there was a total
of active energy that was oppressive.
“We had a fire below us one night,” said Howard. “We are two hundred
feet from the street and there were no fire escapes. We all thought it
was good-bye. It was nearly half an hour before we found out that the
smoke booming up the stairways and into this room had no danger behind
it.”
“Gracious!” Mrs. Carnarvon shuddered and looked uneasily about.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Howard reassured her. “We’ve arranged things
better since then. Besides, that fire demonstrated that the building was
fireproof.”
“And what happened?” asked Miss Trevor.
“Why, just what you see now. The Managing Editor, Mr. King over
there--I’ll introduce him to you presently--went up to a group of men
standing at one of the windows. They were pretending indifference as
they looked down at the crowd which was shouting and tossing its arms
in a way that more than suggested pity for us poor devils up here. Well,
King said: ‘Boys, boys, this isn’t getting out a paper.’ Every one went
back to his work and--and that was all.”
They went on to the room behind the newsroom. As Howard opened its heavy
door a sound, almost a roar, of clicking instruments and typewriters
burst out. Here again were scores of desks with men seated at them,
every man with a typewriter and a telegraph instrument before him.
“These are our direct wires,” Howard explained. “Our correspondents in
all the big cities, east, west, north and south and in London, are at
the other end of these wires. Let me show you.”
Howard spoke to the operator nearest them. “Whom have you got?”
“I’m taking three thousand words from Kansas City,” he replied.
“Washington is on the next wire.”
“Ask Mr. Simpson how the President is to-night,” Howard said to the
Washington operator.
His instrument clicked a few times and was silent. Almost immediately
the receiver began to click and, as the operator dashed the message off
on his typewriter the two women read over his shoulder: “Just came from
White House. He is no better, probably a little worse because weaker.
Simpson.”
“And can you hear just as quickly from London?” Marian asked.
“Almost. I’ll try. There is always a little delay in transmission from
the land systems to the cable system; and messages have to be telephoned
between our office in Trafalgar Square and the cable office down in the
city. Let’s see, it’s five o’clock in the morning in London now. They’ve
been having it hot there. I’ll ask about the weather.”
Howard dictated to the man at the London wire: “Roberts, London. How is
the weather? Howard.”
In less than ten minutes the cable-man handed Howard a typewritten slip
reading: “_News-Record_, New York, Howard: Thermometer 97 our office
now. Promises hottest day yet. Roberts.”
“I never before realised how we have destroyed distance,” said Mrs.
Carnarvon.
“I don’t think any one but a newspaper editor completely realises it,”
Howard answered. “As one sits here night after night, sending messages
far and wide and receiving immediate answers, he loses all sense of
space. The whole world seems to be in his anteroom.”
“I begin to see fascination in this life of yours.” Marian’s face showed
interest to enthusiasm. “This atmosphere tightens one’s nerves. It seems
to me that in the next moment I shall hear of some thrilling happening.”
“It’s listening for the first rumour of the ‘about to happen’ that makes
newspaper-men so old and yet so young, so worn and yet so eager. Every
night, every moment of every night, we are expecting it, hoping for
some astounding news which it will test our resources to the utmost to
present adequately.”
From the news-room they went up to the composing room--a vast hall of
confusion, filled with strange-looking machines and half-dressed men and
boys. Some were hurrying about with galleys of type, with large metal
frames; some were wheeling tables here and there; scores of men and a
few women were seated at the machines. These responded to touches upon
their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out
from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot
metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with
letters printed backwards.
Up through the floor of this room burst boxes filled with “copy.” Boys
snatched the scrawled, ragged-looking sheets and tossed them upon a
desk. A man seated there cut them into little strips, hanging each strip
upon a hook. A line of men filed rapidly past these hooks, snatching
each man a single strip and darting away to a machine.
“It is getting late,” said Howard. “The final rush for the first edition
is on. They are setting the last ‘copy.’”
“But,” Mrs. Carnarvon asked, “how do they ever get the different parts
of the different news-items together straight?”
“The man who is cutting copy there--don’t you see him make little marks
on each piece? Those marks tell them just where their ‘take,’ as they
call it, belongs.”
They went over to the part of the great room where there were many
tables, on each a metal frame about the size of a page of the newspaper.
Some of the frames were filled with type, others were partly empty. And
men were lifting into them the galleys of type under the direction of
the Night Editor and his staff. As soon as a frame was filled two men
began to even the ends of the columns and then to screw up an inside
framework which held the type firmly in place. Then a man laid a great
sheet of what looked like blotting-paper upon the page of type and
pounded it down with a mallet and scraped it with a stiff brush.