They looked down the shaft. “It has dropped to the sub-basement,” said
Howard, “two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending
it into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses;
metal will be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal
form, the metal impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the
press to print from.”
They walked back through the room which was now in almost lunatic
confusion--forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors,
compositors, boys, rushing to and fro in a fury of activity. Again the
phenomenon of the news-room, the individual faces calm but their tense
expressions and their swift motions making an impression of almost
irrational excitement.
“Why such haste?” asked Marian.
“Because the paper must be put to press. It must contain the very latest
news and it must also catch the mails; and the mail-trains do not wait.”
They descended in the main elevator to the ground floor and then went
down a dark and winding staircase until they faced an iron door. Howard
pushed it open and they entered the press-room. Its temperature was
blood-heat, its air heavy and nauseating with the odours of ink, moist
paper and oil, its lights dim. They were in a gallery and below them on
all sides were the huge presses, silent, motionless, waiting.
Suddenly a small army of men leaped upon the mighty machines, scrambled
over them, then sprang back. With a tremendous roar that shook the
entire building the presses began to revolve, to hurl out great heaps of
newspapers.
“Those presses eat six hundred thousand pounds of paper and four tons
of ink a week,” Howard shouted. “They can throw out two hundred thousand
complete papers an hour--papers that are cut, folded, pasted, and ready
to send away. Let us go before you are stifled. This air is horrible.”
They returned in the elevator to his lofty office. Even there a slight
vibration from the press-room could be felt. But it was calm and still,
a fit place from which to view the panorama of sleeping city and drowsy
harbour tranquil in the moonlight.
“Look.” Howard was leaning over the railing just outside his window.
They looked straight down three hundred feet to the street made bright
by electric lights. Scores of wagons loaded with newspapers were rushing
away from the several newspaper buildings. The shouts, the clash of
hoofs and heavy tires on the granite blocks, the whirr of automobiles,
were borne faintly upward.
“It is the race to the railway stations to catch the mail-trains,”
Howard explained. “The first editions go to the country. These wagons
are hurrying in order that tens of thousands of people hundreds of miles
away, at Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and scores on scores of
towns between and beyond, may find the New York newspapers on their
breakfast-tables.”
The office-boy came with a bundle of papers, warm, moist, the ink
brilliant.
“And now for the inquest,” said Howard.
“The inquest?” Marian looked at him inquiringly.
“Yes--viewing the corpse. It was to give birth to this that there
was all that intensity and fury--that and a thousand times more. For,
remember, this paper is the work of perhaps twenty thousand brains, in
every part of the world, throughout civilisation and far into the depths
of barbarism. Look at these date lines--cities and towns everywhere in
our own country, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America. You’ll
find most of the capitals of Europe represented; and Africa, north,
south and central, east and west coast. Here’s India and here the heart
of Siberia.
“There is China and there Japan and there Australia. Think of these
scores of newspaper correspondents telegraphing news of the doings of
their fellow beings--not what they did last month or last year, but what
they did a few hours ago--some of it what they were doing while we were
dining up at Sherry’s. Then think of the thousands on thousands of these
newspaper-men, eager, watchful agents of publicity, who were on duty but
had nothing to report to-day. And----”
Howard shrugged his shoulders and tossed the paper from him.
“There it lies,” he said, “a corpse. Already a corpse, its life ended
before it was fairly born. There it is, dead and done for--writ in
water, and by anonymous hands. Who knows who did it? Who cares?”
He caught Marian’s eyes, looking wonder and reproach.
“I don’t like to hear you say that,” she said, forgetting Mrs.
Carnarvon. “Other men--yes, the little men who work for the cheap
rewards. But not you, who work for the sake of work. This night’s
experience has thrilled me. I understand your profession now. I see what
it means to us all, to civilisation, what a splendid force for good,
for enlightenment, for uplifting it is. I can see a great flood of light
radiating from this building, pouring into the dark places, driving
away ignorance. And the thunder of those presses seems to me to fill
the world with some mighty command--what is it?--oh, yes--I can hear it
distinctly. It is, ‘Let there be light!’”
Mrs. Carnarvon’s back was toward them and she was looking out at the
harbour. Howard put his hands upon Marian’s shoulders and they looked
each the other straight in the eyes.
“Lovers and comrades,” he said, “always. And how strong we
are--together!”
XIX.
“I MUST BE RICH.”
“While I don’t feel dependent upon the owners of the _News-Record_,
still I am not exactly independent of them either. And if I left them it
would only be to become dependent in the same way upon somebody else. A
man who makes his living by the advocacy of principles should be wholly
free. If he isn’t, the principles are sure sooner or later to become
incidental to the living, instead of the living being incidental to the
principles.”
“But you see--perhaps I ought to have told you before--that is, there
may be”--Marian was stammering and blushing.
“What’s the matter? Don’t frighten me by looking so--so criminal,”
Howard laughed.
It was late in August. Marian was visiting Mrs. Brandon at
Irvington-on-the-Hudson and she and Howard were driving.
“I never told you. But the fact is”--she hesitated again.
“Is it about your other engagement? You never told me about that--how
you broke it off. I don’t want you to tell me unless you wish to. You
know I never meddle in past matters. I’m simply trying to help you out.”
“Instead, you’re making it worse. I’d rather not tell you that if----”
“We’ll never speak of it again. And now, what is it that is troubling
you?”
“I have been trying to tell you--I wish you wouldn’t look at me--I’ve
got a small income--it’s really very small.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it. It isn’t very big--only about
eight thousand a year--some years not so much. But then, if anything
happened--we could be--we could live.”
Howard smiled as he looked at her--but not with his eyes.
“I’m glad,” he said. “It makes me feel safer in several ways. And I’m
especially glad that it is not larger than mine. I know it’s stupid, as
so many of our instincts are; but I should not like to marry a woman who
had a larger income than I could earn. I think it is the only remnant
I have of the ‘lord and master’ idea that makes so many men ridiculous.
But we need not let that bother us. Fate has made us about equal in this
respect, so unimportant yet so important; and we are each independent of
the other. Each will always know that love is the only bond that holds
us together.”
They decided that they would live at the rate of about fifteen thousand
a year and would put by the rest of their income. She was to undertake
the entire management of their home, he transferring his share by check
each month.
“And so,” she said, “we shall never have to discuss money matters.”
“We couldn’t,” laughed Howard. “I don’t know anything about them and
could not take part in a discussion.”
As they were to be married in November, they planned to take an
apartment when Marian came back to town--in late September. She was to
attend to the furnishing and all was to be in readiness by the time they
were married. Howard was to get a six weeks’ vacation and, as soon as
they returned, they were to go to housekeeping.
Her visit to the _News-Record_ office had made a change in her.
Until she met Howard, she had known only the world-that-idles and
the world-that-drudges. Howard brought her the first real news of the
world-that-works. Of course she knew that there was such a world, but
she had confused it with the world-that-drudges. She liked to hear
Howard talk about his world, but she thought that his enthusiasm blinded
him to the truth of its drudgery; and she often caught herself half
regretting that he had to work.
But that vast machine for the swift collecting and distributing of the
news of the world had opened her eyes, had made her see her lover and,
through him, his life, in a different aspect. She had accepted the
supercilious, thoughtless opinion of those about her that the newspaper
is a mere purveyor of inaccurate gossip. And while Howard had tried to
show her his profession as it was, he had only succeeded in convincing
her that he himself had an exalted view of it; a view which she thought
creditable to him but wide of the disagreeable truth.
On that trip down-town she had seen “the press” with the flaws reduced
and the merits looming. She had looked into those all-seeing eyes
that watch the councils of statesmen and the movements of nations and
peoples, yet also note the swing of a murderous knife in an alley of the
slums. She had heard that stentorian voice of Publicity, arousing the
people of the earth to apprehend, to reflect, to progress.
She had been proud of Howard for his appearance, for what he said and
the way he said it. Now she was proud of him for the part he was taking
in this wonderful world-that-works. And she would not have confessed to
him how insignificant she felt, how weak and worthless.
She thought she was impatient for the time to come when she could learn
how to help him in his work, could begin to feel that she too had a
real share in it. With what seemed to her most creditable energy and
self-sacrifice she tried again to interest herself in newspapers. But
the trivial parts bored her; the chronicles of crime repelled her; and
the politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the
range of her knowledge or of her interest. “I shall wait until we are
married,” she said, “then he will teach me.” And she did not suspect how
significant, how ominous her postponement was.
She asked him if he would not teach her and he replied: “Why, certainly,
if you are interested. But I don’t intend to trouble you with the
details of my profession. I want you to lead your own life--to do what
interests you.”
She did not stop to analyse her feeling of relief at this release, and
went on to protest: “But I want your life to be my life. I want there to
be only one life--our life.”
“And there shall be--each contributing his share, at least I’ll try to
contribute mine. But you have your own individuality, dear; and a very
strong one it is. And I don’t want you to change.”
At the time he was deep in his plans for illustrating the _News-Record_.
Early in that fall’s campaign they had secured the best cartoonist
in America. Cartoons are rarely the work of one man but are got up by
consultations. Howard spent never less than an hour each day with
the cartoonist, Wickham, wrestling with the problem of the next day’s
picture. For he insisted upon having a striking cartoon each day, and
gave it the most conspicuous place in the paper--the top-centre of the
first page.
“If a cartoon is worth printing at all,” he said, “it is worth printing
large and conspicuous. And to be worth printing it must be like an ideal
editorial--one point sharply and swiftly made and so clear that the most
careless glance-of-the-eye is enough.”
Wickham had made a series of cartoons on the campaign, humorous and
satirical, which had the distinction of being reproduced on lantern
slides for use in all parts of the town. It was an admirable beginning
of the new policy of illustration. Howard had been making a careful
study of all the illustrators in the country, not overlooking those
toiling in obscurity on the big western dailies. He had selected a staff
of twenty; as soon as Coulter and Stokely assented, he engaged them by
telegraph. Five were developed artists, the rest beginners with talent.
He gave all of his attention for two weeks to organising this staff.
He infected it with his enthusiasm. He impressed upon it his ideas of
newspaper illustration--the dash and energy of the French illustrators
adapted to American public taste. He insisted upon the artists studying
the French illustrated papers and applying what they learned. It was
not until the first Sunday in December that he felt ready to submit the
results of these labours to the public.
Again he scored over the “contemporaries” of the _News-Record_.
They printed many more illustrations than it did. It had only one
illustration on a page, but there was one on every page and a good one.
All the subjects were well chosen--either action or character--and as
many good looking women as possible.
“Never publish a commonplace face,” he said. “There is no such thing in
life as an uninteresting face. Always find the element of interest and
bring it out.”
The result of this policy, interpreted by a carefully trained and
enthusiastic staff, was what the out-of-town press was soon praising as
“a revelation in newspaper-illustration.” Howard himself was surprised.
He had mentally insured against a long period of disappointment.
“This shows,” he remarked to King and Vroom, “how much more competent
men are than we usually think--if they get a chance, if they are pointed
in the right direction and are left free.”
“He certainly knows his business.” Vroom was looking after Howard
admiringly. “I never saw anybody who so well understood when to lead and
when to let alone. What results he does get!”
“A pity to waste such talents on this thankless business,” said King.
“If he’d gone into real business, he would have a salary of a hundred
thousand a year, would be rich and secure for life. Why, a business
man could and would make a whole career on the ideas he has in a single
week. As it is----”
King shrugged his shoulders and Vroom finished the sentence for him:
“Coulter and Stokely could kick him out to-morrow and the _News-Record_
would go straight on living upon his ideas for ten years at least.”
Howard needed no one to make this truth clear to him to the full. Often,
as he thought of his expanding tastes, his expanding expenditures and
his expanding plans both for his private life and for his career, he
felt an awful sinking at the heart and a sense of fundamental weakness.
“I am building upon sand,” he said to himself. “In business, in the law,
in almost any other career to-day’s work would be to-morrow’s capital.
As it is, I am ever more and more a slave. To be free I ought to be poor
or rich. And I cannot endure the thought of poverty again. I must be
rich.”
The idea allured him to a degree that made him ashamed of himself.
Sometimes, when he was talking to Marian or writing editorials, all in
the strain of high principle and contempt for sordidness, he would flush
at the thought that he was in reality a good deal of a hypocrite. “I’m
expressing the ideals I ought to have, the ideals I used to have, not
the ideals I have.”
But the clearer this discrepancy became to him and the wider the gap
between what he ought to think and what he really did think, the more
strenuously he protested to himself against himself, and the more
fiercely he denounced in public the very poison he was himself taking.
“I am living in a tainted atmosphere,” he said to Marian. “We all are. I
fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if
I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore of my body?”
“I don’t understand you.” Marian was used to his moods of self-criticism
and did not attach much importance to them.
He thought a moment. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “What’s the use of
discussing what can’t be helped?” How could he tell her that the
greatest factor in his enervating environment was herself; that the
strongest chains which held him in it were the chains which bound him
to her? Indeed, was he not indulging in cowardly self-excuse in thinking
that this was true? Had not his success, rather than his love, made
ambition unfettered by principle the mainspring of his life?
XX.
ILLUSION.
“How shall we be married?” Howard asked her in the late Autumn.
“I know it will not be in a church with ushers and bridesmaids and a
crowd gaping at us. I suppose there is a public side to marriage since
the state makes one enter into a formal contract. But that can be done
privately. I should as soon think of driving down the Avenue with my
arms about your neck as of a public wedding.”
“Thank you,” he laughed. “I was afraid--well, women are usually so
fond of--but you’re not usual. Let us see. The minister is absolutely
necessary, I suppose. Would one feel married if there were not a
minister?”
“I don’t know--I feel--”
She hesitated and blushed but looked straight at him with that
expression in her eyes which always made him think of their love as
their religion.
“Feel--go on. I want to hear that very, very much.”
“I feel as if I were just as much married to you now as I ever could
be.”
“And that is how I have felt ever since the day, when I hardly knew you,
when you suddenly came into my life--my real, inner life where no one
had been before--and sat down and at once made it look as if it were
your home. And the place that had been lonely was lonely no more, and
has not been since.”
She put her hand in his and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Only that--that I am so happy. It--it frightens me. It seems so like a
dream.”
“It’s going to be a long, long dream, isn’t it?” He lifted her hand and
kissed it, then put it down in her lap again gently as if he feared a
sudden movement might awaken them. “Perhaps it had better be at Mrs.
Carnarvon’s house--some morning just before luncheon and we could go
quietly away afterward.”
“Yes--and--tell me,” she said, “wouldn’t it be better for us not to
go far away--and not to stay long? It seems to me that I most want to
begin--begin our life together just as it will be.”
“Are you afraid you wouldn’t know what to do with me if I were idling
about all day long?”
“Not exactly that. But I’d rather not take a vacation until we had
earned it together.”
“What a beautiful idea! I’ll see what I can do.”
They postponed the wedding until Howard had the “art-department” of the
_News-Record_ well established. It was on a bright winter day in the
second week of January that they stood up together and were married by
the Mayor whom Howard had helped to elect. Only Mr. and Mrs. Carnarvon
and Marian’s brother were there. Then the six sat down to luncheon, and
at three o’clock Howard and his wife started for Lakewood.
When they arrived a victoria was waiting. As soon as they were seated,
Howard said “Home.” The coachman touched his hat and the horses set
out at a swift trot. The sun was setting and the dry, still air was
saturated with the perfume of the snow-draped pines. Within five minutes
the carriage was at a pretty little cottage with wide, glass-enclosed
porches. They entered the hall. In the rooms on either side open fires
were blazing an ecstatic welcome.
“How do you like ‘home’?” asked Howard.
“I don’t quite understand.”
“You remember your plan of beginning at once. Well--this is the
compromise. Stokely has let me have his house here for a month--we may
keep it two if we like it. There is a telephone. The office isn’t two
hours away by rail. The newspapers are here early. We can combine work
and play.”
The manservant had left the room, a sort of library-reception room.
Marian was seated in a big chair drawn near the fire. She had thrown
back her wraps and was slowly drawing off her gloves. Howard stood at
the side of the fire, leaning against the mantel and looking down at
her.
“Before you definitely decide to stay--” he paused.
“Yes,” she said, her colour heightening as she slowly lifted her eyes to
his, “yes--why this solemn tone?”
“If ever--in the days that come--one never knows what may happen--if
ever you should find that you had changed toward me----”
“Yes?”
“I ask you--don’t promise--I never want you to promise me anything--I
want you always--at every moment--to be perfectly free. So I just ask
that you will let me see it. Then we can talk about it frankly, and we
can decide what is best to do.”
“But--suppose--you see I might still not wish to wound you--” she
suggested, half teasing, half in earnest.
“It seems to me now that it is impossible that we can ever change. It
seems to me--” he sat on the wide arm of her chair, and leaned over
until his head touched hers, “that if you were to change it would break
my heart. But if you were to change and were to hide it from me, I
should find it out some day and----”
“And what----”
“It would be worse--a broken heart, a horror of myself, a--a contempt
for you.”
“Whatever comes, I’ll be myself or try to be. Is that what you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“And if you change?”
“But I shall not!”
“Why do you say that so positively?”
“Because--well, there are some things that we wish to believe and half
believe, and some things that we believe that we believe, and somethings
that we _know_. I _know_ about you--about my love for you.”
“It is strange in a way, isn’t it?” Marian was gently drawing her
fingers through his. “This is all so different from what I used to think
love would be. I used to picture to myself a man, something like you in
appearance, only taller and fair, who would be my master, who would make
me do what he wished. I think a woman always dreams of a lover who will
be strong enough to be her ruler. And here----”
“So I am not the strong man that you look up to and tremble before? We
shall see.”
“Don’t laugh at me. I mean that instead I have a man who makes me rule
myself. You make me feel strong, not weak, and proud, not humble. You
make me respect myself so.”
“The democracy of love--freedom, equality, fraternity. Don’t you like
it?”
“Madame is served.” It was the servant holding back one of the
portières, his face expressionless, his eyes down.
* * * * *
Happiness evades description or analysis. We can only say that
it reaches its highest point when a man and a woman, intelligent,
appreciative, sympathetic, endowed with youth, health and freedom, are
devoting their energies solely and determinedly to verifying each a
preconceived idea of the other.
“And what do you think of it by this time?”
Marian asked the question in the pause after a twenty minutes’ canter
over a straightaway stretch through the pines.
“Of what?” Howard inquired. “I mean of what phase of it. Of you?”
“Well,--yes, of me--after a week.”
“As I expected, only more so--more than I could have imagined. And you,
what do you think?”
“It’s very different from what I expected. It seemed to me beforehand
that you, even you, would ‘get on my nerves’ just a little at times. I
didn’t expect you to appreciate--to feel my moods and to avoid doing--or
is it that you simply cannot do--anything jarring. You have amazing
instincts or else--” Marian looked at him and smiled mischievously, “or
else you have been well educated. Oh, I don’t mind--not in the least.
No matter what the cause, I’m glad--glad--glad that you have been taught
how to treat a woman.”
“I see you are determined to destroy me,” Howard was in jest, yet in
earnest. “I am not used to being flattered. I have never had but one
critic, and I have trained him to be severe and uncharitable. Now if you
set me up on a high altar and wave the censers and cry ‘glory, glory,
glory,’ I’ll lose my head. You have a terrible responsibility. I trust
you and I believe everything you say.”
“I’ll begin my duties as critic as soon as we go back to--to earth. But
at present I’m going to be selfish. You see it makes me happier to blind
myself to your faults.”
They rode in silence for a few moments and then she said:
“I wish I had your feeling about--about democracy. I see your point of
view but I can’t take it. I know that you are right but I’m afraid my
education is too strong for me. I don’t believe in the people as you do.
It’s beautiful when you say it. I like to hear you. And I would not
wish you to feel as I do. I’d hate it if you did. It would be stooping,
grovelling for you to make distinctions among people. But----”