CHAPTER I

COMMON CAUSE

A Novel of the War in America

By Samuel Hopkins Adams

With Illustrations by Arthur William Brown

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company

1919

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COMMON CAUSE

PART I

CHAPTER I

DEUTSCHLAND, Deutschland über alles!” Three thousand voices blended and

swelled in the powerful harmony. The walls of the Fenchester Auditorium

trembled to it. The banners, with their German mottoes of welcome,

swayed to the rhythm.

“Über alles in der Welt!”

The thundering descent of the line with its superb resonances was

as martial as a cavalry charge. Three thousand flushed, perspiring,

commonplace faces above respectable black coats in the one sex and

mildly ornate blouses in the other, were caught by the fire and the

ferment of it and grew suddenly rapt and ecstatic. Wave after wave of

massed harmonies followed in the onset. One could feel, rather than

hear, in the impassioned voices a spirit instantly more fanatic, more

exotic, a strange and exultant note, as of challenge. It was inspiring.

It was startling. It was formidable. It was anything for which young Mr.

Jeremy Robson, down in the reporters’ seats, might find an adjective,

except, perhaps, American.

Yet this was the American city of Fenchester, capital of the sovereign

State of Centralia, in the year of grace and peace, nineteen hundred and

twelve, half a decade before the United States of America descended into

the Valley of the Shadow of Death to face the German guns, thundering

out that same chorus of “Germany over all in the world!”

All the Federated German Societies of the State of Centralia in annual

convention assembled might sing their federated German heads off for all

that Jeremy Robson cared. He mildly approved the music, not so much

for the sense as for the sound, under cover of which he was enabled to

question his neighbor, Galpin, of The Guardian, concerning the visiting

notabilities upon the stage. For young Mr. Robson was still a bit new to

his work on The Record, and rather flattered that an assignment of

this importance should have fallen to him. The local and political

celebrities he already knew--the Governor; the Mayor; Robert Wanser,

President of the Fenchester Trust Company; State Senator Martin Embree;

Carey Crobin, the “Boss of the Ward”; Emil Bausch, President of the

local Deutscher Club; and a dozen of the other leading citizens, all

ornamented with conspicuous badges. Galpin obligingly indicated the

principal strangers. Gordon Fliess, of Bellair, head of the Fliess

Brewing Company; the Reverend Theo Gunst, the militant ecclesiast of a

near-by German Theological Seminary; Ernst Bauer, of the Marlittstown

Herold und Zeitung; Pastor Klink, the recognized head of the German

religious press of the region; Martin Dolge, accredited with being

the dictator of the State’s educational system; and the Herr Professor

Koerner, of the University of Felsingen, special envoy from Germany to

the United States for the propagation of that wide-spread and carefully

fostered Teutonic plant, Deutschtum, the spirit of German Kultur in

foreign lands.

At the close of the musical exaltation of Germany above all the world,

including, of course, the hospitably adoptive nation under whose

protection the singers sat, the exercises proceeded with a verbal

glorification of the Fatherland. The Governor, in complimentary and

carefully memorized German, lauded the Teutons as the prop of the State.

The Mayor, in strongly Teutonized English, proclaimed them the hope of

the city. Several other speakers, whose accents identified them as more

American than their sentiments, acclaimed the upholders of Deutschtum as

salt of the earth and pillars of Society. Then a chorus of public school

children, in the colors of imperial Germany rose to sing “Die Wacht am

Rhein,” and everybody rose with them, or nearly everybody. They sang it

directly in the face of his Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm, gazing,

bewreathed, down at them from over the stage, with stern and martial

approval.

“They do it mighty well,” commented young Jeremy Robson.

“Ay-ah. Why would n’t they!” returned Galpin.

“You mean they’ve been specially drilled for it?”

“Specially nothing! That’s part of their regular school exercises.”

“In the German schools?”

“In the _public_ schools. Our schools. Paid for out of our taxes. ‘Come

to order.’ Tap-tap-tap with Teacher’s ruler. ‘Der bupils will now rice

und zing “Die Wacht am Rhein.”’ But try em with ‘America,’ and they

would n’t know the first verse.”

“You seem to feel strongly about it.”

“Not in working hours. Have n’t got any feelings. I’m a reporter.”

From this point the programme was exclusively in German. The next

speaker, Pastor Klink, rose and glorified God, a typically if not

exclusively German God. Emil Bausch, following, extolled the Kaiser

rather more piously than his predecessor had glorified the Kaiser’s

Creator. Martin Dolge apostrophized the spirit of Deutschtum, which, if

one might believe him, was invented by the Creator and improved by the

Kaiser. Just here occurred an unfortunate break in the programme. The

next speaker on the list had been called out, and an interim must be

filled while he was retrieved. The chairman motioned to the band leader

for music. Whether in a spirit of perversity or by sheer, unhappy

chance, the director led his men in the strains of “The Star-Spangled

Banner.”

In justice to our citizens of German descent and allegiance, it must

be admitted that they are of equable spirit. Nobody openly resented the

playing of the national anthem. A glance of disapproval passed between

the professorial envoy from Germany and Pastor Klink, and some of the

others on the stage frowned momentarily. But their habitual tolerant

good nature at once reasserted itself. Of course, no one rose; that

gesture was reserved for the German national music. No one, that is who

counted, in that assemblage. But from the reporters’ seats Jeremy Robson

and Galpin dimly made out a figure, long-coated, straw-hatted and slim,

in the first row of the balcony’s farthest corner, standing stiffly

erect.

Around it buzzed a small disturbance. There were sounds of laughter,

which spread and mingled with a few calls of disapprobation. A woman

beside the erect figure seemed to be making an effort at dissuasion.

It was unavailing. On the stage there were curious looks and queries.

Presently the whole house was gazing at the slender, lone figure.

“Who’s the kid?” asked Jeremy Robson, interested.

“Don’t know him,” answered Galpin, staring.

“I like his nerve, anyway.”

“It’s better than his style,” commented the other, grinning. “If he’s

going to stand to attention, why does n’t he take off his hat?”

“Here’s another one,” said The Guardian reporter, turning toward the

lower tier box on their right.

An iron-gray, square-jawed man with shrewd and pleasant eyes, who, in

his obviously expensive but easy-fitting suit of homespun, gave the

impression of physical power, was shouldering his way to the rail. A

small American flag occupied a humble position in a group of insignia

ornamenting the next box. The man plucked it out and made as if he would

raise it above his head, then changed his mind. Holding it stiffly in

front of him he turned to face the distant figure, and so stood, grim,

awkward, solid, while the chosen voice of the Nation’s patriotism sang

to unheeding ears below.

“Movie stuff,” observed Jeremy Robson with that cynicism which every

young reporter considers proper to his profession.

“That’s Magnus Laurens,” said his mentor. “Nothing theatrical about

Magnus. He’s a reg’lar feller.”

The novice was impressed. For Laurens was a name of prestige throughout

Centralia. Its owner controlled the water-power of the State and was a

growing political figure.

“What’s he doing it for?” he inquired.

“Because he’s an American, I suppose. Queer reason, ain’t it!”

“There’s another, then,” returned Robson, as there arose, from a front

row seat on the stage, the strong and graceful figure of Martin Embree,

State Senator from the Northern Tier where the Germans make up three

fourths of the population.

“Trust Smiling Mart to do the tactful thing,” observed Galpin. “He’s the

guy that invented popularity, and he’s held the patent ever since.”

The Senator was wearing his famous smile which was both a natural

ornament and a political asset. He directed it upon Magnus Laurens who

did not see it, turned it toward the slim patriot in the gallery who may

or may not have observed it, and then carried it close to the ear of the

chairman. Snatches of his eager and low-toned persuasion floated down to

the listening Robson.

“... all up. Can’t... harm. National... after all. If don’t want...

leave... me.”

The chairman shook his head glumly, broke loose from the smile, spoke

a word to the erring orchestra leader. The music stopped. The figure in

the balcony sank into the dimness of its background. Magnus Laurens sat

down. Senator Embree, smiling and gracious still, returned to his chair.

“There’s my story,” said young Jeremy Robson, ever on the lookout for

the picturesque. “If I can find that kid,” he added.

“Try Magnus Laurens,” suggested his elder. “Maybe he knows him.”

Throughout the address of the Herr Professor Koerner, young Mr. Robson

sat absently making notes. The notes were wholly irrelevant to the

learned envoy’s speech. Yet it was an interesting, even a significant

speech, had there been any in those easy days, to appreciate its

significance. The learned representative of German propaganda impressed

upon his hearers the holy purpose of Deutschtum. German ties must be

maintained; German habits and customs of life and above all the

German speech must be piously fostered at whatever distance from the

Fatherland, to the end that, in the inevitable day when Germany’s

oppressors, jealous of her power and greatness, should force her to draw

the sword in self-defense, every scion of German blood might rally to

her, against the world, if need be. Amidst the “Hochs!” and “Sehr guts!”

which punctuated the oratory, the negligent reporter for The Record

sat sketching the outlines of his word-picture of the stripling in the

gallery and the magnate in the box, standing to honor their country’s

anthem, amidst the amused and patronizing wonderment of the Federated

German Societies of Centralia. As the session drew to a close, he left.

Magnus Laurens had already gone. By good fortune, young Jeremy Robson

caught a glimpse of his square and powerful figure, emerging from the

crowd and going down a side street. A girl in a riding-habit was with

him. In the bearing of her slender body, in the poise of the little head

with its tight-packed strands of tawny hair, Jeremy Robson caught a

hint of a subtle and innate quality, something gallant and proud and

challenging. He overtook them.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Laurens. My name is Robson. I’m a reporter for

The Record. Could I have a word with you?”

The water-power magnate turned upon him a face of mingled annoyance and

amusement.

“This is what I get for making a spectacle of myself, I take it,” he

grumbled. “What do you want to know? Why I did it?”

“No. That’s plain enough. Who was the boy in the balcony?”

“Boy?” repeated Mr. Laurens in surprise.

“Yes. The kid that stood up when they began ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

Do you know him?”

“Let me refer that question to Miss Marcia Ames. She was right at the

spot, in the balcony. Miss Ames, Mr. Robson.”

Jeremy bowed and found himself looking into two large, young, and

extremely self-possessed grayish eyes, frank and happy eyes on the

surface, but with inscrutable lights and depths beneath. For the rest,

his hasty impression recorded an alert, intelligent, and delicately

slanted face, and an almost disconcertingly direct regard. The skin was

of that translucent brown-over-pink which the sun god bestows only upon

his tried and true acolytes.

“Do you know the boy, Miss Ames?”

“What boy?” Her voice was cool and liquid and endearing, and just a bit

lazily indifferent, with a strange hint--never anything more--of accent.

“The boy who stood in the first row of the balcony.”

“That was not a boy.”

“No?”

“That was I.”

“You! You’re much too tall.”

“If you thought me a boy I should seem much shorter,” she returned

composedly.

“Do you mind telling me how you came to stand up as you did?”

“I always do when they play my national anthem. Do not you?”

The “do not you” gave the young man the clue to her speech, to the

slightly exotic quality of it. It was less the accent than the clear

precision of her use of words, without the slur or contraction of common

usage. The charm of her soft and rather deep voice saved it from any

taint of the pedantic.

“No,” said he.

“Ah? But perhaps you are not an American.”

“What else should I be?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“Nor do I,” put in Magnus Laurens, “I’m ashamed to say.”

“At all events, you did it this time. It was very nice in you. Usually I

feel quite lonely. And once they were going to arrest me for it.”

“Where was that?” asked Jeremy Robson stealthily reaching for his folded

square of scratch paper.

“In Germany. When I was at school there. Are you going to put all this

in the paper?”

“Would you mind?”

“I suppose I ought to mind. It is very forward and unmaidenly, is it

not, to permit one’s self to be dragged into print?”

“It is,” said Magnus Laurens, his shrewd eyes twinkling, “and about one

hundred and one maidens out of every hundred just love it, according to

my observations.”

“I do not think that I should object,” said Miss Ames calmly. “In fact I

should be curious to see what you would say about me.”

That was Jeremy Robson’s first intimation of her unique frankness of

attitude toward herself as toward all other persons and things.

“We are on our way to the hotel where Mrs. Laurens is waiting for us,”

explained the water-power dictator. “Why not walk along with us while

you conclude the interview?”

“I have n’t much more to ask Miss Ames,” said the reporter, complying,

“except what started her on her patriotic habit.”

“My father was an army officer,” she explained. “While he was alive

we always stood up together. Now I could no more sit through ‘The

Star-Spangled Banner’ than you would wear your hat in church. But I

really do not see anything to write about in _that_. There was much,

surely, more interesting at the meeting.”

“What, for instance?”

“The whole affair,” she said vaguely. “It seemed to me strange. What are

so many German subjects doing over here?”

“Those aren’t German subjects, my dear,” said Mr. Laurens. “They’re

American citizens, mostly.”

“Surely not!” exclaimed the girl. “The German flags, and the pictures

of the Emperor, and all the talk about the German spirit, and--and

‘Deutschland über alles.’ From _Americans?_”

“Certainly,” said the reporter. “And good ones.”

“I should think they would better be called good Germans. One cannot

imagine that sort of thing occurring in a German city. I mean if the

case were reversed, and Americans wanted to hold such a meeting.”

“No? What would happen?”

“Verboten. Lèse-majesté. Anti-imperialismus. Something dreadful of that

sort.”

“They aren’t as broad-minded in such things as we are,” observed Mr.

Laurens, in a tone which, caused young Jeremy Robson to glance at him

curiously and then become thoughtful.

“Did you notice that fat and glossy person on the stage, the one who

had just made that speech--what was his name? Bausch, I think--did you

notice his patronizing grin when you got up, Mr. Laurens? As if he felt

a calm superiority to your second-rate patriotism.”

“What a malicious young person!” said Laurens. “There’s really no harm

in Bausch that can’t be blown off like froth from beer.”

“I suppose there _is_ a story in all that,” ruminated young Jeremy

Robson: “if I had the sense to see it. Maybe it would take a historian’s

mind instead of a reporter’s to see it right. But I think I can get some

of it into my ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ story.”

“Good luck to you and it, then,” said Magnus Laurens cordially. “I’d

like to see some one in this town at this time point out that, after

all, America is America.”

“Would you?” said the girl. “Walk around to the next block and I will

show you what I saw this morning as I passed.”

They followed her around the corner and stopped before a tiny shop with

a giant’s boot swinging in front of it. The legend over the door read:

Boot & Shoe Infirmary Eli Wade, Surgeon

Across the window was stretched a brand-new American flag, and beneath

it a second legend, roughly inked on packing-paper and secured to the

glass with cobbler’s wax:

The Flag of Our Country. It stands alone.

Two beribboned, bespangled, bebadged German Federates passed near them,

and paused.

“That is the man who refused to decorate with _our_ colors,” said one,

in German.

“Pfui!” said the second contemptuously, “’s machts nichts. Matters

noding!”

Jeremy Robson took off his hat and made his adieus. “You’ve given me

something to think about,” he said, apportioning his acknowledgment

impartially, though his eyes were on the strange and alluring face of

Marcia Ames. “Good-bye, and thank you.”

“If you’re grateful for being made to think,” returned Magnus Laurens,

good-humoredly, “there’s hope for you as a reporter yet. That’s a

good-looking boy,” he added to his companion, as the young man turned

away.

“Good-looking?” she repeated, with a rising inflection that controverted

the opinion.

“Oh, not a young Adonis. But there’s something under that thatch of hair

of his or I’m no guesser. Grit, and purpose, and, I think, honesty. I

hope he does n’t make hash of us in his paper.”

Allowing himself an hour and a half, the reporter turned out in

that time what he firmly believed to be “a pippin of a story.” After

delivering the final page to an approving copy-reader he washed up, got

his coat and hat and started for the door. In the hallway he came upon

Senator Martin Embree, just closing a conversation with Farley, the

editor-in-chief.

“No politics in this, you know,” the Senator was saying, in his sunny

voice.

“I understand,” said Farley. “If there were--”

“We’d probably be on opposite sides as usual. This is simply a case of

not stirring up useless ill-feeling.”

“Quite right. And we’re much obliged to you. As long as The Guardian

won’t touch it, you can rely on us.”

“I was sure I could.” The Senator turned and came face to face with the

reporter. “Hello, Mr. Robson,” he said with his enveloping smile, and

Jeremy went on feeling that the world was a more friendly place, for

having encountered that expression of human good-will.

He descended into Fenchester’s main street. For the day, it might

have been a foreign city. It was all aflutter with streamers inscribed

“Wilkommen” followed by sundry German tags. German speech crossed

German speech in the humming air. German faces, moist, heavy-hued,

good-humored, were lifted to the insignia of the various Bunds, Vereins,

Gesellschafts, and Kranzes, all pledged to the fostering and maintenance

of a tenacious and irreconcilable foreign culture in the carelessly

hospitable land which they had adopted as their own. Over streets,

residences, stores, public buildings waved the banners of imperial

Germany.

Far above it all, from the dome of the capitol, floated the Stars

and Stripes. The flag represented a formality. It meant nothing in

particular to anybody, except that the Legislature was then in session.

Weaving in the languid air, it seemed remote, lonely, occluded from the

jovial fellowship of the swarming Teuton colors. For the time, at least,

it had been put aside from men’s minds. It was an alien in the land

whose sons had died for it, and would again die for it in a day drawing

inevitably nearer.

CHAPTER II

THE pippin of a story never ripened into print. Young Mr. Robson’s

formal report of the meeting, a staid bit of journalism, appeared in

full. But not a word of that brilliant pen-picture which he had so

affectionately worked out. With a flaccid hope that there might have

been a mistake somewhere, its author perused the columns of The Record

a second time. Nothing! Perhaps, whispered hope, they had held it over.

Being of the “sketch” order, it was good at any time. Daring greatly, he

invaded the editorial sanctum where the proof-hooks hang. On the second

he found his work of art. Upon the margin was rubber-stamped a single

word: “_Killed_.”

Young Jeremy Robson felt as if that lethal monosyllable had been

simultaneously imprinted upon his journalistic ambitions. Like salt to

the smart of his professional hurt came another thought. What would Miss

Marcia Ames think of him when she opened the paper and found nothing of

the promised article there? Would there be disappointment in the

depths of those disturbing eyes? Or--more probable and intolerable

supposition--laughter at the expense of the young cockerel of a reporter

who had crowed so confidently about what he was going to do? Happily for

the reporter’s immediate future, Mr. Farley had departed. For, were that

mild, editorial gentleman still available for the purpose, young Jeremy

Robson had straightway bearded him in his lair, demanded an explanation,

denounced him as a soggy-souled Philistine, thrown his job in his teeth,

and if he had exhibited symptoms of being “snooty” (the word is of

young Mr. Robson’s off-duty hours, and he must be responsible therefor),

bunged him one in the eye.

At which critical point young Mr. Robson came to and laughed at himself,

albeit somewhat ruefully. It was his saving grace that already he had

learned to laugh at himself. Many an equally high-spirited youngster has

gone to the devil, because he let the devil get in his laugh first.

“Souvenir of a lost masterpiece,” observed Jeremy, folding the galley

for accommodation to his pocket. He decided to take his medicine; to say

no word of the matter to any one, though he would mightily have liked to

know why the story was killed.

His resolution of silence was abandoned as the result of a meeting with

Andrew Galpin on the following morning. The Guardian man accosted him:

“Did n’t see your ‘Star-Spangled’ story, Bo.”

“No.”

“What became of it?”

“Killed. What became of yours?”

“Did n’t? write any.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a reporter; that’s why. Why queer your paper by writing American

stuff on a German day!”

“Think that’s why my stuff was killed?” asked Robson, impressed.

“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “What did _you_ think?”

“I thought perhaps it was n’t good enough.”

“Bunk!” said the downright Galpin. “You did n’t think it at all.”

“Well, I did n’t,” admitted his junior, reddening. “I read it over in

proof. I think it’s dam’ good.”

“That’s the talk! Got a proof with you?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see.” Galpin leaned against a convenient railing, and proceeded

to absorb, rather than read, the two-thirds column, with the practiced

swiftness of his craft. “Ayah. You’re right,” he corroborated. “It _is_

dam’ good.”

“But not good enough for The Record.”

“Too good. It’s got too much guts.”

Jeremy Robson repeated the rugged Saxon word in a tone of

uncomprehending inquiry.

“Too American,” expounded the other. “Too much

‘This-is-our-country-and-don’t-you-forget-it’ in it.”

“Show me one line where--”

“It’s between the lines. You could n’t keep it out with barbed wire.

You ’re no reporter,” said Andrew Galpin severely. “What d’ you think

you’re writing for The Record? Poetry?”

“Look here!” said the bewildered Robson. “You just said it was good and

now--”

“And now I’m telling you it’s rotten. Punk! _As_ newspaper work, _for_

The Record. Or any other paper hereabouts on this great and glorious

German day. Why, it’d spoil the breakfast beer of every good and

superior citizen of German birth and extraction that read it.”

“Then they are n’t any sort of Americans if they can’t stand that!”

“‘Bah’ said Mary’s little lamb to Mary,” observed Mr. Galpin impolitely.

“Who said they were Americans? Did you hear much American at that

meeting? Did you catch any loud and frenzied cheering for the red,

white, and blue, or get your eyesight overcrowded with photographs of

the American eagle? Did you mistake the picture of the gent with the

wild-boar whiskerines for a new photo of His Excellency, the President

of the United States? Did you--”

“Oh, cut it!” said the exasperated Robson.

“Ay-ah” grunted Galpin, and studied the younger man. “Sore?” he inquired

carelessly.

“A little, I guess.”

“Like to kick a hole in The Record shop, and walk haughtily out through

it?”

“That’s the way I felt yesterday.”

“Want a job on The Guardian?”

“Could you get me on?”

“I can _take_ you on. Beginning Monday, I’m city editor. I could use

one guy that can write.” He glanced again at the killed proof, before

folding it to return to its owner. A thought struck the reporter. “Will

you print this?”

“Lord; no!”

“The Guardian would n’t be any more independent or any less timid about

this than The Record?”

“Not a bit.”

“Then why do you advise me to change?”

“I don’t.”

“But you offered--”

“Stop right there while you’re still on the track. I offered. I did n’t

advise. If you’re in this business to write what you want, and to

hell with the public, I’ve got just one piece of advice for you. Turn

millionaire and get a paper of your own.”

Jeremy flushed. “I may do it yet. Not the millionaire part, but the

other.”

“Give me a job, then,” said the other good-humoredly, “as you won’t take

one from me. If you should want it, it’s twenty a week to start. Not bad

for a town of 70,000, Bo.”

“The Record’s promised me better. I guess I’ll stay.”

“Ay-ah.” Galpin accepted the decision indifferently. “Well, I guess

you’ll get somewhere sometime if you don’t go bucking your head against

stone walls. But don’t waste your poetic style on patriotic kids who

stand nobly up in galleries for the honor of the flag.”

“That kid was a girl.”

“So I noticed in your story. Think I know her.”

“Do you?” cried the other eagerly.

“Only as far as business requires. She’s going to make newspaper copy

one of these days.”

“How’s that?”

“Only girl intercollegiate athlete in America,” replied Galpin in the

manner of a headline. “Trying for the golf-team, and from what I hear,

liable to make it.”

“At Old Central?” asked Robson, using the local name for the State

University of Centralia, on the outskirts of Fenchester.

“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “She’s a special. Lives down on Montgomery

Street with old Miss Pritchard.” His companion made a mental note of it.

“Were n’t you a golf-sharp in Kirk College?”

“Captained the team.”

“Well, if you really want to write a story about Miss Marcia Ames, watch

out for the team trials next month. The Record’ll print that all right.

Ay-ah,” he added reflectively. “And there’ll be no spiking of the story

by Mart Embree, either.”

“Senator Embree?” said Robson, surprised. “Where does he come in?”

“Did n’t happen to see him around The Record office before you went to

press yesterday, did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ay-ah. Thought he might ’a’ dropped in. He made a call on The

Guardian too.”

“What for?”

“Dove-o’-peace mission. Wanted to make sure that nothing would get in

about the ‘Star-Spangled’ business to stir up ill-feeling.”

There rose in Jeremy Robson’s mind the recollection of Farley’s

assurance to Embree, “You can rely on us;” which he had not before

connected with his slain masterpiece. Now he perceived with indignation

that it had been slaughtered to save a German holiday, at the hands of

the Honorable Martin Embree.

“He’s the one that put a crimp in my story, is he!”

“Not necessarily,” qualified The Guardian man. “Probably they would n’t

have run it anyway. But he wanted to be sure. That’s Smiling Martin’s

way. You don’t catch him missing many tricks.”

“What’s his interest?”

“Just to smooth things over and keep everything lovely. Rasping up the

comfortable Dutchers would n’t do anybody any good, according to his

figuring, and would only make things unpleasant.”

“A pussyfooter, eh?”

“Don’t you believe it,” returned Galpin. “Martin Embree will fight and

fight like the devil when he sees good cause for it. How else do you

think he could have got where he is?”

“I don’t know,” retorted the younger man sullenly. “But I don’t see

where he comes in to interfere with me.”

“Ask him.”

“I will. Where can I find him?”

“As quick as all that!” commented The Guardian reporter. He noted a

hardening of the small muscles at the corner of Robson’s mouth. “Scrappy

little feller, ain’t you!”

“Thanks,” said Jeremy Robson, with his sudden, pleasant grin. “I get

what you mean. Don’t think I’m going to make a fool of myself. Just the

same I _will_ ask him, if you’ll tell me where I can catch him.”

“’Round at Trask’s boarding-house, after dinner, most likely. That’s

where he lives.”

At Trask’s that evening Jeremy Robson ascended through a clinging aroma

of cookery, to a third-floor room, very tiny, very tidy, very much

overcrowded with books, pamphlets, a cot, and the spare squareness

of the Honorable Martin Embree. The visitor was somewhat surprised at

finding a political leader of such prominence so frugally housed. Embree

sat at a small table, making notes from a federal report on railroad

earnings. He lifted his head and Robson noted a single splash of gray

in the brown hair that waved luxuriantly up from the broad forehead. His

meetings with the Northern Tier leader had been casual: so he had

been the more flattered at Embree’s ready recognition on the previous

evening. Now he was struck anew with the soft, almost womanish

brilliance of the prominent eyes, and the sense of power in the upper

part of the face, sharpening down into shrewdness, in the mouth and

chin. A thoroughly attractive face, and more than that, a winning as

well as an impressive personality. Embree smiled as he greeted his

caller by name, and the reporter suddenly felt all the animus ooze from

his purpose. He still wanted to know the why and wherefore of Embree’s

action. But his interest in knowing was equally apportioned between

himself and his adversary. Characteristically, Jeremy went straight to

the point.

“I came to find out why you got The Record to kill my story.”

“Sit down.” The Senator relinquished his chair, motioned his visitor to

it, and seated himself on the edge of the cot. “Your story? What story

was that?”

“Why, about the band playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and

Miss -------- and just two people standing up for it.”

“Was it your story? I’m sorry if it was killed.” Embree’s tone was

of the simplest sincerity. “But it really was n’t my doing. I only

suggested to Mr. Farley that a mishandling of the episode might create

an unfortunate impression and incidentally reflect upon The Record. You

know how sensitive our German-Americans are.”

“It’d be better for us if we American-Americans were a little more

sensitive,” blurted Robson.

“You’re wholly right, Mr. Robson. I wish more of us had the spirit of

that young lady in the gallery. What a gallant little figure she was;

something knightly and valorous about her! And she, all alone.”

“There was Mr. Laurens,” suggested Robson.

“Quite another matter. For political effect only, and not in the best of

taste, I thought. If the chairman had n’t been a numskull he would have

called the whole audience to its feet, and the matter would have been

a graceful and pleasant and patriotic incident. But Felder is a

blunderhead. He stopped the music. I would have got the people up,

myself, in another two seconds.”

“Senator, you understand the Germans,” said the reporter, reverting to

his central interest. “I’d like you to read this and tell me if it would

have given offense to any decently loyal German-American.”

Martin Embree took the proofs, and leaned forward under the lamp to

read them. What Andrew Galpin had absorbed, almost in a glance, the

politician plodded through with exasperating slowness. Impatience gave

way to interest in the reporter’s mind, however, when he perceived that

his reader was perusing the galley a second time over.

“Well?” he inquired, as Embree raised his head.

The Senator’s fine smile enveloped him. “Frankly, it would n’t do.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Too much fervor.”

“It’s American fervor.”

“True. But it’s exclusively American. ‘All the rest of you not born

Americans, be damned!’ It’s--well--uncharitable.”

The writer’s color deepened. “You mean it’s unfair.”

“Not intentionally. But there are phrases in there that sneer.”

“They could be edited out.”

“Not so easily. I don’t think your writing would be easy to edit,

Mr. Robson. It hangs together pretty tight. But, so far as this is

concerned, I can plead ‘Not guilty’ to being an accomplice. I’m sure Mr.

Farley would never have let it get into print.”

“It was all set up.”

“But not OK’d, I assume. You see, Mr. Robson, one must live among our

Germans to understand them. They’re the best people in the world and

the highest-minded citizens. Germany is n’t a nation to them. It’s

a sentiment. It’s El Dorado. It’s music and poetry and art and

literature--and a fairy-land. Lay a profane hand on it, and they’re as

sensitive as children, and as sulky. But at heart they’re just as sound

Americans as you or I, and in politics they’re always for the right and

clean and progressive thing. All they need is to be humored in their

harmless and rather silly sentimentalism. You see, I’m talking to you

quite frankly.”

“And I appreciate it, Senator.”

“Well, I appreciate having seen this.” Embree tapped the proof with the

back of his finger. “Apart from the substance of it, I’m interested.

I’m mightily interested.” Jeremy Robson met his direct, intent gaze and

waited. “If I know anything about writing, you can write. There’s stuff

in this. It’s a real picture. Perhaps there was a touch of inspiration,

too.” His face became sunny again with its conquering smile. “Did you

know Miss Ames?”

“Not before the interview with her.” To his annoyance Jeremy Robson felt

his face grow hot. Had he written _that_ between the lines, too?

“No? A gallant figure. Young America; the imperishable spirit. Do

you think you could write like that--without special inspiration?” he

demanded abruptly.

“It’s the best story I’ve done yet. But I can beat it, when I’ve had

more experience.”

“Then this town is going to be too small for you.”

There was no tone of patronage or flattery in the rich, even voice.

“Were you thinking of staying here?”

“Until I learn the ropes. I want to own a pa--” Jeremy Robson stopped

short. Why should he be confiding his ambitions to this stranger, to

whom he owed nothing, unless an injury?

“A paper of your own,” concluded Embree. He fell thoughtful. “Ever write

any editorials?” he asked presently.

“No.”

“Why don’t you try it?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it.”

“Think of it now.”

“Reporters aren’t supposed to go outside their own department.”

“Pshaw! A newspaper is like any other business; it needs all the ability

it can command. Now, I believe you could write editorials. And if you

care to try, I’ll be glad to speak a word to Mr. Farley.”

“That’s mighty good of you, Senator.”

“Not at all. Gives me a chance to set myself right in your mind,” smiled

the other, “for appearing to interfere with your activities. We need

a new paper, a new kind of paper here in the capital,” he added after

another of his pauses.

Jeremy Robson became uncomfortable. “I guess I’ve been talking

through my hat,” he confessed. “It must take a lot of capital to buy a

newspaper.”

“Not so much, for a small-city plant.”

“More than I’ll ever see, though.”

“If the right man came to light and proved himself, he might find

backing. That’s why I take an interest in the local newspaper situation.

It’s only a question of the right man. We’re looking for him.”

“I’d like to be that man,” blurted the caller.

“But _are_ you? That’s the question.” The Senator’s fine eyes twinkled.

But his tone was serious enough.

“How should I know, myself? I’ve only had a few months’ experience.

Unless you count college journalism.”

“I do,” answered the other unexpectedly. “A client of mine is a trustee

of Kirk College. I had occasion to follow the Kirk-Bell’s attacks on the

Board in the intercollegiate football mix-up. You were editing The Bell,

I believe.”

“Yes,” admitted Robson. “I guess we were a pretty brash lot.”

“All of that. And you were quite wrong. But you were fighting for what

you thought a principle, and I liked the way you fought.” He put up a

large, well-kempt hand and pushed a wave of hair back from his forehead.

“I’m fighting for a principle here.”

“Political?” said Jeremy Robson.

“Do politics interest you?”

“They make me sick,” returned the reporter vigorously.

“That’s bad. Why?”

“Because of the cheap skates and dumheads I run into whenever I get a

legislative job.”

“On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I thank you.”

Jeremy Robson blushed. “Well, you know I don’t mean you, Senator.”

“Possibly some of my associates are shrewder than you give them credit

for being. But the State Legislature is n’t politics. It’s only the

sieve through which politics pass. If you’re not interested in politics,

the newspaper business is n’t your line.”

“I did n’t say I was n’t interested in politics.”

“True enough. You did n’t.” Embree shot one of his reckoning glances at

the young fellow. “Well, if you can prove yourself--if you can fight

as well as you write and write as hard as you fight--you’re going to be

worth keeping an eye on. And I’m going to keep an eye on you for my own

reasons.”

“I’ll remember that,” said the reporter, rising, “when I come to try my

hand at editorial writing.”

“Sit down. Unless you’ve got some engagement.” Jeremy shook his head. “I

want to talk to you a little more.” Another of those pauses, which gave

the effect of being filled with considered thinking. “About myself,”

finished the Honorable Martin Embree.

The visitor resumed his seat.

“Do you read your own paper?”

“Every word of it, every day.”

“Then you see an occasional editorial about your humble servant.”

“Yes.” Jeremy began to feel uncomfortable. The Record’s editorial

attitude toward the Honorable Martin Embree was, to put it mildly,

unsympathetic. “I was surprised to see you in the office,” he added

bluntly.

“Did you think I was as thin-skinned as that?” Em-bree’s smile was

good-humor itself. “Politically, Farley is my enemy. Personally, we

get along pleasantly. In his heart he knows I’m right,” announced the

Senator from the Northern Tier, with calm assurance.

“Then why does n’t he say so?”

“He’s only a hired man.”

“He’s editor-in-chief.”

“By title. The real boss is Clarence Ensign.”

Jeremy stared. “How’s that? I thought Mr. Ensign was nothing but a

traveling millionaire.”

“So he is, mostly. But he owns the controlling interest in The Record.

Absentee landlordism. It’s worse in a newspaper than in a mill, because

a newspaper is supposed to be representative of its public. Ensign’s

newspaper represents only the investments which let him sport around the

fashionable seaside places in his yacht. Because I’m after some of the

big interests that pay his graft-money, The Record is after me. It’s all

part of the game.”

As the politician proceeded to amplify on his theme, Jeremy Robson

became thoughtful. “See here, Senator,” he said at length, “suppose I

should ‘prove up,’ as you say, and should get backing for a paper, I’d

be just a hired man for my backers, would n’t I?”

“Not if you were strong enough to make yourself the necessary part of

the paper. But you’d have to believe in the policies of your backers.”

“I don’t believe I could believe in anything I had to believe in,”

returned Jeremy quaintly.

“Correct answer,” approved Embree with emphasis. “No fellow could that’s

worth his salt. Anyway, it does n’t so much matter, provided you believe

in something and stick to your belief instead of singing whatever tune

you’re paid or ordered to sing.” Again, one of his frequent pauses.

“Like The Record and The Guardian.”

“The Guardian, too?”

“Oh, that’s worse. The Record at least represents its own interests,

even if they are pretty sordid. The Guardian is anybody’s hired man. Do

you know Wymett, the editor?”

“No.”

“He’s a crook.”

“That’s a short and ugly word, Senator.”

“Wymett’s a short and ugly animile. Short on payment of his obligations,

and ugly in a fight because you never know who he’s sold to last.

Though, at that”--and here the considering pause came in the middle of

the statement--“you can be pretty sure that Montrose Clark will have the

deciding word.”

“Is that the President of the Public Utilities Corporation?”

“That’s the man. Know him?”

“I’ve reported him at meetings, twice. He did n’t say anything much.”

“He never does, in public or for the public. What did you think of him?”

“I thought he was a pompous little stuffed shirt,” was the reporter’s

irreverent opinion.

“He’s pompous enough. But there’s brains behind those piggy eyes of his.

We were talking of politics. Well, Montrose Clark _is_ politics. He’s

politics, big.”

“I would have thought he was finance, and bluff.”

“Finance, of course. That is politics. Let me give you a one-minute

synopsis of the politics of this State. I told you the Legislature was a

sieve. Well, the men that feed and shake the sieve are the financial

and public utility interests; Montrose Clark representing the traction

crowd, Magnus Laurens representing the water-power grabbers, Robert

Wanser representing the banks, Sam Corliess representing the lake

shipping, Selden Dana representing the railroads, and so on. And our

newspapers are mostly just their little yellow dogs, useful to help put

over their deals and to fool the people. What we need, and we need it

right here in the capital, is a newspaper that will tell the people, not

fool them.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

The Senator’s earnest gaze flickered for a moment. “I,” he said, at

length. “I’m making this fight pretty near alone so far.”

“What fight is that?”

“The fight to get the control of the State away from the grafters and

exploiters and turn it over to the people. And I’m beginning to get the

support I need now.”

“From the German crowd?”

The Senator smiled at his caller with an expression almost affectionate.

“You would n’t take to politics much worse than a duck to water. Yes;

from the Germans largely. I’m a reformer, and I’m not ashamed of the

name. The German-Americans are solid for reform and clean government.

Government by corporations is never clean. It can’t be. It uses the kind

of tools that Wymett is.”

“The Guardian has offered me a job,” observed Jeremy.

“Don’t touch it,” advised the other earnestly. “They ’re on the ragged

edge. As I told you, Wymett is a crook. One of these days I’m going to

tell the State that.”

“Maybe I’ll be there to report it,” said the caller, smiling.

“Maybe you’ll be there (you should work into the legislative end, by

the way, for the experience); but you won’t report it. Your paper would

print any attack by Wymett on me that suited its purposes. But if I

proved Wymett to be a crook and a grafter--not a word in The Record.

That’s the way the papers hang together.”

“Well, that’s all right,” returned Jeremy stoutly. “Why shouldn’t

newspaper men stand together? Politicians do.”

“You feel that way about it?” The Senator’s tone was colder. “It’s

a question of fair play. However”--the sunny smile returned to his

face--“we’ve had a pretty straight talk, and I hope I’ve given you

something to carry away with you. I’ll admit my object is largely

selfish. I’m looking everywhere for the man who can eventually make a

newspaper for the public. It won’t come tomorrow, or next day. But it’ll

come some day. It’s got to. And don’t forget that editorial writing.

Make it mild, at first.”

Before he went to bed that night, Jeremy Robson had sketched out three

editorials. For a week he re-wrote and re-cast and polished them. To his

keen satisfaction, two of them were accepted. The third, which touched

upon the “Star-Spangled Banner” episode, most tactfully and in what the

writer deemed to be the broadest and most charitable spirit, was turned

down. Farley encouraged him.

“Keep it up, Robson. As soon as you’ve learned our ways you’ll fit into

the page.”

CHAPTER III

“Oh, happier he who gains not

The Love some seem to gain:

The joy that custom stains not

Shall still with him remain.

The loveliness that wanes not,

The Love that ne’er can wane.”

THE soft, young contralto voice floating out from the old house

on Montgomery Street, mingled with the breath of roses that spread

possessively over the veranda. A ripple of sparkling chords, like wind

passing over water, died away in a delicate and plaintive minor cadence.

A light footstep moved within the house. The voice, now not more than

a clear murmur, hummed in the hallway. Something told the listener and

lurker on the sidewalk that it were advisable he should be on his way.

To be caught staring, gawking and explanationless, before the Wondrous

Maiden’s domicile is not the happiest method of producing a favorable

impression upon the Wondrous Maiden, which latter was become the

immediate and predominant purpose of young Mr. Jeremy Robson’s

existence.

He passed on. After a score or more of paces he began to lag and waver.

Yet an undue hesitancy of spirit had never been reckonable as among

young Mr. Robson’s major failings. He had come along Montgomery Street,

which is a free public thoroughfare wherein any and all may pass,

without let or hindrance, upon their lawful occasions, a youth upright

and secure of himself. Nothing more formidable had marked his itinerary

than a singularly sweet young voice, singing to an unknown measure the

words of Mr. Andrew Lang’s haunting and wistful lyric. Yet young Mr.

Robson became instantly aware of strange symptoms within himself.

His pulse was markedly uneven. His eyes were affected by a spasmodic

inclination which all but twisted his neck about in the opposite

direction to that of his reluctant steps. His mind was a kingdom divided

against itself.

Arrived at the corner he found himself racked by conflicting muscular

intentions and inhibitions. He turned into Nicklin Avenue, leading

downtown to his proper occupation, and almost immediately executed

a rightabout-face. He returned to the corner, and rebounded from the

impact of an unreasoning and unmanning fear. Again he retraced his

steps and halted. His feet gave him the painful impression of a divided

allegiance, and he recognized and resented the invalidity of the poet's

praise of those supposedly useful members:

“I only have to steer ’em, and

They ride me everywheres.”

In the midst of his confusion he became hotly aware of the surprised

scrutiny of a small boy with a dog.

“Lost somethin’?” inquired the small boy, scornfully.

Jeremy Robson started. Was the urchin possessed of the spirit of

divination? Certainly young Mr. Robson had lost his nerve. That much he

confessed to himself. The small boy’s dog divined the fact also. He made

a charge upon the wavering youth with the evident intention of chasing

him up a tree. To be flouted in the open day by a cur of highly

impeachable antecedents was a little too much!

“Get out!” commanded Jeremy Robson, in a tone which left no room for

doubt.

The small boy and his dog retired hastily. Their intended victim,

somewhat reconstituted in soul by the victory, clinched his final

decision, not indeed without a sinking of the breath, and with a firm

tread and an unwavering eye (as he had once written of an unfortunate

going to his execution) again plunged into the imminent, deadly breach

of Montgomery Street, and headed for the old house amid the roses. He

reckoned that she would be just about on the porch now. If she were

n’t, he would go on past and make for the office, and try again on the

morrow. If she were--well, he had recovered command of at least three

matured and plausible lies to explain his presence. Then he saw her,

and the lies forsook and left him stranded with nothing better than the

truth to tell, if the issue rose.

She was standing at the top of the five veranda steps.

An errant wind weaving among the roses above her, let through swift

glints of sunlight, which played upon her face and hair with fairy

touches. There was a dreamy and wistful smile, as in lingering memory

of the music she had sung, upon her lips. Her face, broad at the temples

and narrowing down to a small, self-willed chin, was modeled nearer upon

the sensitive and changeful lines of the triangle than upon the cold and

classic oval. Above it the splendid mass of tawny hair was hardly kept

respectably within bounds by the prisoning devices of net and band. She

was slender, and firm-set, and straight with the soft and strong lines

of young, untainted health and vigor. By the warm hues, and the lithe

poise of her, she was a creature bred in the happy usages of sunlight

and free winds and the open spaces. Again he felt in her that subtle,

disturbing, starry quality that makes for dreams.

In her hand she swung a broad sun-hat. Reluctantly she lifted her arms

to set it on her head. The pulses of Jeremy Robson made a bound of

hopefulness. Evidently she was coming out upon the street. Her eyes were

lifted and he wondered that he could ever have thought them gray, so

flooded were they with hazel lights as they met the radiance, sifting

down through the trees. She turned them upon him and a slow recognition

grew in them. Opening the gate, she stood waiting. He lifted his hat as

he approached.

“Good-morning,” she greeted him in that voice which, with its

indefinable distinction of accent, had thrilled in his memory, since he

had first heard her speak.

He returned her greeting, calling her by name.

“It is The Record you write for, is it not?” she asked. “Yes. But they

don’t print all I write.”

“So I infer,” she returned with grave and intent eyes. “Were you

disappointed?”

“A little.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I supposed that you had made up your mind that it was not worth writing

after all.”

“It was worth writing.”

“But not worth printing?”

“Worth printing, too. But the editors were afraid of offending the

Germans. So they killed it.”

“Did you write it in that way?”

“What way?”

“To offend the Germans.”

“No. I wrote it to show that there was a place for Americanism even in a

German meeting.”

“I am glad you did that,” she said quietly.

“You’ve a right to be. You’re responsible. For the way I wrote it, I

mean. You gave me the notion.”

“I am glad of that, too. But I am sorrier than ever that I did not see

your article.”

“Perhaps I’ll show it to you some day.”

She nodded, without asking him how or where. Marcia Ames was one of

those individuals who wait unquestioningly and accept generously. “It is

quite a coincidence my meeting you here,” she said. “For I wished to ask

you about the article.”

Behold the path now made plain for the lurker and retracer of steps!

No need even for those well-formulated lies; he could simply accept the

theory of coincidence. And, most unaccountably, he found that he could

n’t. Perhaps he could have, had he not looked into her eyes just then.

That steady, limpid, candid, confident regard of hers forbade even a

petty and harmless deceit of convenience. Once for all Jeremy Robson

knew that whatever might be between them in future, there would at least

be truth. And with a sharp pang, felt the foreboding that the truth

might yet hurt him to the limit of his capacity for pain.

“No,” he denied. “No coincidence.”

“Not?” she asked, surprised.

“I’ve passed here every day for the last ten days.”

“Do you live on this block?”

“No. In the other end of town, up near the University.”

“Then you would not pass here to go to The Record office.”

“Your geography is unimpeachable.”

“Is it a riddle? I am not at all clever at them.”

“It’s a confession. I’ve been coming this way day after day for a

particular purpose.”

“What was it?”

“To see you again.”

“What did you wish to see me about?”

“Nothing. Nothing in particular.”

“Just to see me? That is very nice of you.” She studied him with her

direct and serene regard. But a small and willful dimple materialized

on the brown curve of her cheek, and a little one-sided smile went up to

meet it. “Not as a reporter this time?”

“Not in the least. A reporter may be just an ordinary human being, off

duty, you know.”

“Are you just an ordinary human being?”

“Very much so. Don’t I strike you that way?” His tone was one of

exaggerated anxiety.

The girl studied him with impersonal interest, quite free from

embarrassment. Magnus Laurens had credited him with good looks. In the

usual sense, Miss Ames decided, confirming her first opinion, he was not

entitled to this credit. He was rather rugged of build and face, with

mobile lips, boyish and pleasant eyes, an obstinate jaw which looked as

if it might set to courage and endurance or perhaps to sullenness, and

the expression and bearing of one vividly and intelligently curious

about the life-scheme of which he was a part. The girl noted, with

approval, his dress: quietly harmonious in every detail yet without

suggesting the finicky habit; a style which would have been unremarkable

in New York or London, but which stood out with a pleasant distinction

among the more casual and careless garb of the Middle West.

“I really had not given it much thought,” she answered, having completed

her scrutiny. “Your methods seem rather out of the ordinary.”

“Are you a million years old?” he asked abruptly.

If his intention was to startle her, it failed signally. “Surely that is

a very personal question. I am not--quite. Why do you ask?”

“Because you look so like a kid and yet you’ve got the nerve--no, not

nerve--the confidence and manner of your own great-grandmother. It’s

very confusing,” complained young Mr. Robson, leaning dejectedly upon

the gate.

“Perhaps it arrives from my having been brought up abroad and much among

older people,” she surmised, with one of her slightly un-English turns

of phrase. “One reason for my coming here to the University is to

accustom myself to your American ways.”

“‘_Your_’ American ways?”

“Our American ways,” she amended sweetly. “Oh, I am all American in

my heart!” The gay and willful little dimple again materialized on her

cheek. “Still, one cannot remain indefinitely leaning over a gate in

conversation, however thrilling, with a young man whose name one does

not even know, can one?” she pointed out.

“You don’t know my name?” Young Mr. Robson looked distinctly annoyed.

“Mr. Laurens presented me. Don’t you remember?”

“But you were only a reporter who was going to write something about

me, then.” With an emphasis on the final word, slight, indeed, yet amply

sufficient to make amends.

Her caller brightened perceptibly. “Surname Robson. Given name, Jeremy.

Jem, when you get to know me better.”

She opened her eyes very wide to take in this idea. “You expect that we

are going to know each other so well as that?”

“We certainly are if I can bring it about. Don’t you think I’ve made a

good start?”

“At least a quick one. What is your next step?”

“That’s what’s worrying me a little.”

“But so progressing a young man as you, with so much perseverance,” she

taunted, “surely if you planned to see me once, you would plan how to

see me again. Perhaps, though, you do not wish to see me again soon,”

she added, with an adorable mock-melancholy droop of the alluring lips.

“You’ll never win any guessing contests on that form, Miss Ames,” he

assured her, shaking his head solemnly. “But you’re right enough about

my having a plan. The question is, will it work.”

“Try it.”

“Here goes. You’re trying for the Varsity golf team, are n’t you?”

“I intend to, if I improve enough.”

“Are you pretty good?”

“I am steady. Only twice I have been as high as one hundred. But my

short approaches are bad.”

“I can help ’em.”

“Can you? Are you a good player?”

“Fair. But I’ll tell you what I am. I’m a good coach. We never lost an

intercollegiate at Kirk in the three years I captained the team.”

“And you offer to coach me? It is very kind of you.”

“Wait. It may not be so simple as all that.”

“Shall you exact terms?” she smiled.

“This depends on how much you are in earnest about making the team.”

“Very much.”

“Enough to get up at five in the morning and play a round?”

“Why such an unearthly hour?”

“It’s about the only time I can be sure of. Don’t forget I’m a

hard-working reporter.”

“I thought you wished me to forget it, only a moment ago,” she teased.

“I want you to remember that I’m a man,” he retorted, “besides being

a reporter. And that you and I are going to be friends.” He looked her

fairly in the eyes. “At least,” he added quietly.

The baffling lights in her eyes deepened as she met his gaze,

unwaveringly. “I believe that we are--at least,” she said. “When shall

we begin?”

“We _have_ begun.”

“The golf, I mean.”

“To-morrow.”

She laughed outright. “You lose no time.”

“I don’t know that I have any to lose. I don’t know how long you’re to

be here.”

“Nor do I,” she answered with a sudden gravity. “Very well; to-morrow. I

will meet you at the club house at 5.45. Oh! I forgot. My golf shoes are

at Eli Wade’s. You remember; the ‘Boot & Shoe Surgeon’?”

“I’ll get them this afternoon, and bring them with me.”

“‘Lo, Miss Marcy!”

The interruption, in a cheerful sing-song, came from behind Jeremy. He

turned to face the small boy and the dog of his earlier encounter.

“Good-morning, Buddy,” returned the girl.

“I’ve come to weed the sparr’grass.”

“Yes: we have been expecting you.”

“I stopped by home to get you these.” He brought out a fistful of

deep-hearted pansies, bound in a pink string.

The girl took them, gave him a little, quick pat of the hand which he

accepted with a flush of mingled adoration and embarrassment, and pinned

them at her throat.

“This is Mr. Burton Higman,” she said. “Mr. Jeremy Robson. To his

friends, Jem, and Mr. Higman to his friends, Buddy.”

Mr. Higman regarded Mr. Robson with a consideration in which there was

more of suspicion than friendliness.

“Where ’dje gittim?” he demanded of Miss Ames.

“I did not get him. He came,” explained the girl.

“Yep. I seen him before he got here. He was down on the corner, actin’

queer.”

“Hold on, now, Buddy,” protested the other, looking pained. “Don’t take

away a man’s character.”

Miss Ames motioned him to silence, and turned an eye of lively

anticipation upon the urchin.

“What was he doing?”

“Snake-turns. Walk down Nicklin Avenya; turn. Walk up to the corner;

turn again. Stop at the corner; talk to a tree. Walk down Nicklin Avenya

again; turn oncet more. Stand still. I watcht him.”

“What did he do then?” asked the girl, enjoying the discomfiture of her

caller.

The narrator rubbed one foot over the other and considered. “Sweat,” he

stated conscientiously. “Look at his collar.”

Mr. Robson’s involuntary hand and Miss Ames’ involuntary gaze met upon

the article of apparel indicated. It melted under the double pressure.

“Walked back up to Montgomery Street,” continued the conscientious

chronicler en joyably. “Stopped. Cussed the tree. Sweat some more.

Turned down Bank--”

“That will do, Buddy. You should be a detective.” Mr. Burton Higman

blushed in glory. The girl turned to the accused. “Is all this true?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Any mitigating circumstances?”

“I was screwing up my courage to face an ordeal.”

“What’s an ordeal?” demanded the watchful Mr. Higman.

“I am,” replied Miss Ames.

“Yep: I’m on,” observed her youthful admirer, enlightened. “Mr. Wade on

the School Board made us a talk Sat’day, about ordeals. Said each one of

us should adopt a high ordeal and stick to it. If you’re one, and I got

to do it, I choose to adopt you.”

“Buddy,” said his rival.

“Yep?”

“Will you sell out your claim for a dime?”

“No, _sir!_”

“For a quarter?”

“Nope.”

“Foradol--”

“Quit! No fair!” protested Mr. Higman in a voice of poignant agony.

“You’re right. It is n’t fair. Shake, old boy.” Young Mr. Robson

gravely shook young Burton Higman by the hand. “Between you and me, only

honorable and knightly rivalry. We’ll go fishing some day and talk over

high ordeals and other matters close to the heart.”

“And at present Buddy and I will map out the attack upon the asparagus,”

said the girl.

She turned away, with a smile of dismissal for her informal caller.

As he took himself off, Marcia Ames turned to her other admirer. “Well,

Buddy. What do you think of him?”

“He’s a nut,” was the prompt and uncompromising decision.

“So bad? If it is bad. What is a nut?”

“Plumb crazy.”

“You think so? Perhaps, a little.”

“Plumb!” persisted the other jealously. But the innate and responsive

fair-mindedness of youth prompted him to add: “But, say! When he kinda

smiles that way at ye, it’s all off. There’s nothin’ to it. It gets you.

Ain’t it true?” inquired Buddy earnestly.

The unanalytical Buddy was flattered, thrilled, and faintly puzzled by

the instant response to this speech when, laughing, his goddess caught

him in a quick, warm little hug. He did n’t wholly understand why she

did it.

For that matter, neither did she.

CHAPTER IV

GOLF boots?” said Eli Wade, Boot & Shoe Surgeon.

“Fer the young lady at Miss Pritchard’s? Right here.” He held them up

to his own admiration. “A foot that’s _right_” said the Boot & Shoe

Surgeon. “Right _and_ light. Honest wear on them boots. Even as a die.

No sloppy, slovenly running down at one side of the heel. The wearer

of them boots carries her weight square an’ level, she does. She stands

straight an’ she walks straight. Yes, an’ she talks you straight, an’

looks you straight in the eye. Why did n’t she come for ’em herself,

same as she brung ’em? Not ailin’, is she?”

“I was going by this way, so I stopped in to save time,” said Jeremy

Robson.

“You’re welcome. But I’d ruther she’d come, herself. We had a good talk,

her an’ me, when she brung in the boots.” He wrapped them up clumsily

but carefully. “A good operation,” stated the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “An

_extry_ good operation. But no extry charge.”

A figure stirred in a long canvas chair in the corner. From it came a

mutter in which the words “Scab-work” in a contemptuous tone were alone

comprehensible. The figure reared a white-thatched head, and a keen,

lined face, above a sinewy neck set upon a spare frame. “Rich, ain’t

she?” said the figure. “Let her pay extry, then, for extry work.”

“Rich she may or may not be,” replied the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “Proud

she ain’t. Comes in here as free as fresh air an’ as pleasant. ‘Mr.

Wade?’ s’ she. ‘Doctor Wade, when I’m in the Surgery, Miss,’ s’ I.

‘Doctor Wade, you get my trade,’ s’ she, and laughed a little, for she

had n’t meant to say it that way. ‘That’s as purty a rhyme as ever I

heard in my life, Miss,’ s’ I. I looked at the boots. ‘Furrin?’ s’ I.

‘Yes,’ s’ she. I looked up at her. ‘Furrin?’ s’ I. ‘No,’ s’ she.

‘American,’ s’ she. ‘As American as you are.’ ‘Glad to hear it,’ s’ I.

‘You must be an American from ’way-back,’ s’ I, ‘fer the Wades f’m

Wal-_tham_? s’ I, ‘have fit in every war f’m the Revolution sence, all

an’ inclusive, an’ I reckon to live to fight in the comin’ one, ef they

take ’em over sixty years of age,’ s’ I. ‘What is the comin’ one,

Doctor Wade?’ s’ she. ‘Why, the war when us Americans has got to get

together and fight for Americar against all these durn fur-riners that

think they own the earth,’ s’ I. ‘That’s the comin’ war as I reckon it,

an’ I guess it’s comin’ right here in Centralia an’ through the Middle

West purty soon unless we figger to let ourselves get shewed plum off

the map,’ s’ I. Then she told me about noticin’ the flag an’ the motter

in my winder, an’ says that’s why she brung me her trade, an’ she hopes

the flag ’ll stay there, fer trade follers the flag, s’ she, or ought to

in sech a good cause. An’ she laughs that laugh of hern, like music, an’

we settled down an’ had a real good palaver. So,” said the Boot & Shoe

Surgeon, “she gets a low-priced, extry-good operation. Though I’m bound

to say, she’d ’a’ got somethin’ extry jest on the straight way she

wears shoe-leather.”

“You read character from shoes, then,” commented Jeremy Robson, mildly

amused.

“What’d I be if I couldn’t? A cobbler! A leather-patcher! Not a genuwyne

Boot & Shoe Surgeon. Character in shoes? Of course there is. Lemme see

yours.” He lifted up first one, then the other foot of his visitor, as

if he were a horse, and shook his head soberly over them.

“You stumble,” he said. “You ain’t struck your gait, yet. Bump up

against things when there’s no sense in it. Foolish. Obstinit, too, I

would n’t wonder. Lazy? M-m-m! I dunno. I guess you like the easy way

an’ a clear path pretty good. If you’re sensible an’ saving, better

leave them shoes with me for a little toning-up.”

“Will you undertake to improve my character with the improvement to my

shoes?”

“Laugh at me if you like. You don’t laugh at folks that believes in

palmistry. What’s a man’s palm to read! He can change every line in

it with a hoe, or an awl, or a golf-stick. But his shoes! Ah! As a man

walks, so he is. An’ his shoes tell the tale. Take these, young man.”

The Boot & Shoe Surgeon laid an affectionate hand upon Miss Marcia Ames’

boots. “Study ’em. They’ll repay you. There’s courage an’ clean pride

an’ a warm heart that travels the path she walks. Yes; an’ a touch of

vanity--Why not? An’ a temper of their own, them boots. Hot an’ quick

an’ generous. You’ve got to travel some to keep pace with them boots. I

dunno when I’ve had a pair to match ’em. Here’s another pair ’ll go far.”

He lifted them into view. “Hand-made, stout-made, and serviceable.

They ’re climbers, they are! They ’ll reach the high places--if they don’t

slip.”

“Who owns them?”

“The Honorable Martin Embree.”

“A faker,” grunted the white-haired figure.

“A climber. A hustler. A fighter. No faker. Yet--they may slip,” said

the diagnostician, studying the sole of the left boot. “They _may_ slip.

Gave me some advice, when he saw my winder. ‘Leave the flag, but take

out the motter,’ s’ he. ‘There’s no sense in that “It stands alone.”

The country is big enough an’ broad enough for all nationalities, an’

welcome,’ s’ he.’”

“Sensible enough,” growled the figure in the chair. “But he’s a faker.

A half-heart. All for the people in words. But put it up to him in

deeds--he ain’t there.”

“He’s a Socialist,” explained the Boot & Shoe Surgeon, pointing his awl

at the chair. “Nicholas Milliken. Make you acquainted. What did you say

your name was?”

“Jeremy Robson,” said its owner, who had n’t yet said anything of the

sort.

The figure in the chair for the first time honored him with its

attention.

“On The Record?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Reporter?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve got the soul of a louse.”

“Soft words, Nick,” prescribed Eli Wade.

“Soft words? Hard facts! The soul of a louse!”

“Who the devil are you?” demanded Jeremy.

“A Socialist,” repeated the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “Don’t mind him.”

Milliken rose and stood before the subject of his com-temptuous phrase;

long, lean, dry, and bitter. “Me?” said he. “I’m a man. I’m no hired

pen. I write for The Free-Thinker, when I write.”

“Rest of the time he sets type on The Record,” explained Wade.

“That’s it. Many a time I’ve run the stick over your stuff.”

“It seems to have made an unfavorable impression on you,” remarked

Jeremy.

“Oh, you can write.” The other flung the concession to him

condescendingly. “I grant you that. What good does that do you? You’ve

got to trim your facts to your owner’s orders, have n’t you?”

“Not facts,” denied the reporter with some heat. “Facts are facts. I

don’t trim them for anybody.”

“Nobody trims them after they’re written, either, I suppose.”

The tone was not to Jeremy’s liking. “The copy-desk--” he began.

“Oh, cut the guff! The copy-desk is a hired blue pencil, just like

you’re a hired pen. You know what I mean. Why did n’t they print your

story on the girl at the Federated German Societies meeting? Was n’t it

facts? Was n’t it good enough?”

Jeremy was silent.

“I’ll tell you,” resumed the implacable Socialist. “They were afraid.

Afraid of the German crowd. Call their souls their own? Not any more

than you can.”

“What about yourself, Nick?” put in the proprietor of the place. “You

take The Record’s money, the same as this gentleman, only maybe not so

much of it.”

“Do I sell myself for it? Would I write for The Record? Or any other of

the capitalistic press? Eli Wade, you’re honest, you are. A fool, but

honest. You don’t know what a reporter’s got to do to hold his job. Why,

if you was to get into some mix-up over a pair of shoes with the owner

of his paper to-morrow, he’d be sent down here to write you wrong,

whether you were right or wrong, and he’d do it. He’d have to do it.

That’s what comes of a privately owned press, under our capitalistic

system.”

Through the gross exaggeration Jeremy felt the point of a half-truth and

resented it. “No decent reporter would do it,” he asserted.

“Who said anything about ‘decent’ reporters?” countered the other.

Jeremy’s face changed; his weight shifted slightly upon his feet. Not so

slightly but that the pedal diagnostician noticed the movement. “Want to

get your eye punched?” he inquired, of Milliken. “You’re going the right

way for it.”

The Socialist grinned wickedly and relishingly. “Don’t like that, huh?

All right. Come to me a year from now and tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll

apologize. That’s fair. Ain’t it?”

“That’s fair,” corroborated the Boot & Shoe Surgeon.

“Mind you,” continued the Socialist, pursuing his favorite path of

self-explication; “I would n’t ha’ printed your story, either. It was a

fool story. Ain’t the Germans just as good as we are? Better ’n a lot

of us. They believe in the rights o’ men, they do. None of your dirty

aristocratic notions about them. Look at Germany! Most Socialistic

country in the world to-day. Most civilized, too.”

“Let ’em stay in their own country, then,” said Eli Wade. “We don’t

want ’em.”

“Ah, but we do! We need ’em to help on the Social Revolution.”

“My folks fit in one American Revolution,” said the

Doctor stoutly. “I don’t reckon none of us is going to fight in another

led by Germans and crazy folks.”

“You’ll come around,” laughed Milliken. “You’ll live to be ashamed of

that silly motto in your window. Take it out! Take it out, Eli Wade, and

put the Red Flag of World-Brotherhood in its place.”

“Above the American flag, mebbe?”

“Along with it. My stock’s as good Yankee as yours, Eli. But I’m ready

to fight again for libutty, and you ain’t. You read too much in the

capitalistic press. Some day you’ll be reading this young feller’s

editorials, all about the rights o’ capital and what the laboring man

owes to his employer.”

“You will not,” said Jeremy.

“Trying your pen at editorials, ain’t you?”

“Have you been setting those up, too?”

“Exactly. You’ll land. You’ve got the knack. The slick, smooth, oily

trick of making the thing seem what it ain’t. So pretty soon I’ll have

to take that back about your having the soul of a louse. You’ll be worse

than that. I’ll tell you what you’ll be.” And he told, naming a very

ancient and much blown-upon profession.

“That’ll be enough an’ some-to-carry from you,” said the Boot & Shoe

Surgeon indignantly. “Get out of my place an’ don’t come back until

you’ve cleaned your dirty tongue.”

Resentment of his brusque dismissal was far remote from Mr. Nicholas

Milliken’s philosophic mind, if one were to judge by the cheerful smile

with which he rose. “All right, old moozle-head!” he returned

affectionately. “He fires me about once a week,” he explained to Jeremy.

“That’s when he can’t stand any more good, plain facts. They boil over

on him and out I go, with the steam. Don’t you mind me, either, young

feller. You’ll see I’m right, one day. We’re all bound upon the Wheel of

Things, as the old Lammy said to Kim. Supprised, are you, that I know

Roodyerd Kipling?” He preened himself with a childish vanity. “I read

everything! The old Lammy was a bit of a Socialist himself. All bound

upon the Wheel of Things. And if I see a little clearer than you, it’s

only because I happen to be bound a turn or two higher up.”

The ineffable patronage of this amused Jeremy into good humor. “I’ll

call on you for that apology, though, one of these days,” he said to the

parting guest, Eli Wade looked after Milliken with a frown. “Them shoes

of his have got a gallows gait,” he declared. “Lawless paths! Lawless

paths! Why do I stand his bitter tongue? I guess it’s because he makes

me think. I wish I had his education,” sighed the old man.

“Where did he get it?”

“Picked it up. Libraries, night schools, and the like. He was a New

England mill-hand, always in hot water. Stirrin’ up labor troubles an’

all that. Picked up typography an’ drifted out here. A quirky mind an’ a

restless one, an’ a bad course it sets for his feet to follow,” said the

gentle, one-ideaed old philosopher of foot-gear. “But not a bad heart,

Nick has n’t. Come in again, young gentleman,” he added. “Not in the

way of trade. Come in an’ talk with the old man. One of you newspaper

gentlemen drops in for a chat, often. Mr. Galpin of The Guardian. You’ll

know him, I guess?”

“Very well.”

“Them are his spare shoes, yonder. Rough, ordinary, plain articles.

Plodders. But good wearing stuff in ’em an’ right solid on the ground,

every inch. Slow-moving,” he nodded thoughtfully. “Yes; they’ll move

slow, but they won’t never wobble. An’ don’t think to trip up the man

that walks in ’em. It ain’t to be done.”

“I believe you’re right, there.”

“Right? Cert’nly I’m right. Leather never lies. Not good leather.

An’ poor leather’s a dead give-away. My museum of soles.” He waved a

showman’s hand toward the rows of shoes suspended neatly in brackets

of his own devising against the walls. “Look at them Congress gaiters.

Would n’t you know they was a banker’s belongings? Robert Wanser,

President of the Trust Company. Full and easy and comfortable and mebbe

a little sly in the gait. But there’s weight in ’em. Don’t get in

their way. There’s Rappelje’s next ’em; Professor Rappelje, of the

University. Queer neighbors. Straight and thin and fine finished, his

gear. Mebbe a little pinchy. But a man to swear by. And Bausch: them

high-button calfs. He’s a buster. Busts his buttons off. One of them

big, puffin’-up Germans. Always marching. Tramp-tramp-tramp: the

goose-step. Nothin’ o’ that in that lot on the end. Judge Dana. See the

ball of the soles? Worn down. Creeps, he does. Guess he can jump too,

after he’s crept near enough. An’ that pair below, on the right. That’s

a shuffler. Mr. Wymett. Owns The Guardian and runs it. Now here’s a

mincer. Dainty an’ soft he goes an’ dainty an’ soft he lives: the Rev.

Mr. Merserole, rector of our rich folks’ church. For all that, there’s

stuff an’ weight in his shoes.” His hand hovered and touched a pair of

elegantly made, low, laced Oxfords, of almost feminine delicacy. “Style

there, eh? Know what they want, those shoes. Got to be jest so. Spick

an’ span. They say Montrose Clark never has to pay to have ’em

cleaned.”

“Why is that?” asked Jeremy, responsive to the look of invitation in the

old man’s eye.

“Got so many boot-lickers around him,” chuckled the philosopher. “Kick

you as soon as look at you, those would, for all they look so finicky.”

“I’ll come in to see you when I need pointers about people,” said

Jeremy, smiling.

The Boot & Shoe Surgeon handed him the repaired golf-boots. “I’m an

ignorant old man,” he said, “but I know folks’s feet and sometimes I can

guess what path they’ll take. I’ve been talking pretty free to you, Mr.

Robson, for a stranger. But I reckon you’re trustable, ’spite of what

Nick Milliken says.”

“I reckon I am, Doctor Wade,” returned Jeremy, and believed himself as

he said it.

“Yes: the old man likes to talk,” confessed Eli Wade; “an’ about people.

Gossip, some call it. That’s a silly word. What’s history but gossip

about folks that are dead? But, of course, a man like me has to be

careful who he talks to, being in public life.”

“Certainly,” acquiesced the amused Jeremy. “But I did n’t know you were

in public life. What office do you hold?”

“I’m on the Fenchester Public School Board,” said Eli Wade with simple

but profound pride.

CHAPTER V

BOBOLINK on a grass-tuft piped ecstatic welcome to a long-lost friend,

the sun. Five gray and weary days had passed since that amiable orb had

bestowed so much as one uncloaked beam upon birds and men, and on each

of those rain-soaked days, Jeremy Robson had racked his overstrained

vocabulary for new objurgations against the malign fates which had

spread a watery barrier between himself and Marcia Ames. Now the sun was

an hour above the eastern horizon with a flawless sky outspread like

a luxurious carpet for its day’s journey. Secure at that hour in the

undisputed possession of the earth, bobolink swayed and sang, when to

its wrath and amaze a shining missile descended from the sky and bounded

with sprightly twists toward its chosen choir-loft.

“Sliced into the rough again,” said a voice of despair from the hollow

below, and two figures appeared, headed toward the singer, who moved on

with an indignant and expostulatory chirp, but found another perch still

within ear-shot.

“Because you will _not_ keep your head down,” reprehended the deeper

tones of the young man.

Bobolink stretched his liquid throat in a love-song. He sang the

warm sweetness of the earth, and the conquering glory of the sun; the

breeze’s kiss and the welcome of the flower for the bees, and youth

which is made up of all these and comes but once. Out of a full heart he

sent forth his missioning call to young hearts; then, as the girl turned

an exquisite face toward him, he waited for her response.

“That is four,” said she, “and I am not out yet.” And she hewed away a

whole clump of innocent daisies, with one ferocious chop.

“You should have used a niblick the first time,” observed the young man.

Perceiving that romance had forever departed from the human race when,

on such a May morning, such a maid and such a youth could satisfy their

soul with such conversation as this, bobolink flew away to a tussock in

an adjacent field where his own private romance was safe hidden.

To versatile human kind, it is given to make love in many and diverse

manners uncomprehended of the bird species. Not the least ingenious

of his species, Mr. Jeremy Robson had marked out as his first step the

establishment of a systematic association with Miss Marcia Ames, through

golf; and until that association could be trusted to walk alone, as it

were, he purposed to confine his attention strictly to the matter in

hand. Her desire to make the college team was a very genuine one, and he

guessed her to be a young lady of no small determination. Therefore, he

was well satisfied to observe that, on this their first experiment as

teacher and pupil, she was playing rather poorly. This meant longer and

more arduous practice. At the end of the first round, during which he

had devoted close attention but scant suggestion to her performance, he

was four up and her card showed a painful total.

“Fifty-twos will never land you anywhere,” was the conclusion which he

derived from the addition.

“What is to be done?” she asked in her precise English. “I grow worse.”

“Do you read Ibsen?” he inquired.

“I have read him a great deal. But not upon golf,” said Miss Ames with

raised eyebrows.

“Does your playing suggest any particular character of his?”

“You are being absurd. Or is it one of your riddles, at which I am not

clever?”

“I’m giving you a test in self-analysis. ‘The Ibsen character whom you

suggest, particularly when you play your iron shots, is Little Eyolf. The

l silent, as in ’Hades.’”

“I do not think that a very funny joke,” she said scornfully.

“It’s been turned down by three comic papers, though,” he defended.

“Then why must I bear it?”

“To make the point stick in your memory. Once, quite early in the

morning, I came around the corner of a barn on a Philadelphia golf

course, and there was a nice-looking elderly lady whom I had seen the

day before taking her two small grandchildren out walking, addressing

a ball with a brassie and saying, ‘Eye on the ball; slow back; carry

through. Eye on the ball; slow back; carry through,’ over and over

again. Brassie shots were her weakness. The next day that persevering

old grandma went out and made low score in the National Women’s

Championship. Now, if you’ll just think of yourself as Little Eyolf

until you’re good and mad, it’ll help do the trick.”

“What were you doing in Philadelphia?” inquired the girl irrelevantly.

“Not golfing,” he returned. “So, if you don’t mind, we’ll postpone that.

This is a golf lesson, and right here the serious business of the day

begins. The first consideration is to cure you of star-gazing. You

appreciate that that’s your main trouble?”

“Raising my head, you mean?”

“That’s it. Star-gazing, we call it.”

“It occurs because I forget myself.”

“And mostly on your irons. You get your wooden shots off clean. Now,

let’s drive.”

Two straight shots flew down the course, his the longer by fifteen

yards. A ninety-yard approach lay before her.

“Beginneth here the first lesson,” said Jeremy. “It’s a sure cure,

on the homoeopathic principle. Invented it myself for a fellow on

our college team who was a stargazer, and he showed his gratitude by

eliminating me from the individual championship, that fall.” He took a

cardboard box from his pocket, and extracted from it one of a number

of small, gilt stars such as stationers carry in stock. This he pressed

down upon the grass so close behind his pupil’s ball as almost to touch

its lower arc. “Behold the star of your hopes.”

“What am I to do with it?”

“Keep your eye on it--if you can.”

“Until after I have struck the ball?”

“Longer than that. After you’ve played, step forward and plant the sole

of your foot on the star. But you won’t be able to do it. Not the first

time.”

“I shall,” said the girl with quiet conviction.

Taking her stance, she measured the distance with a careful eye, and

sent the ball off with a clean click. Her head remained bent with an

almost devotional intentness. She stepped forward and covered the star

with that boot which Eli Wade had so warmly praised.

“Good!” approved the instructor. “You’ve got will power.”

“I have needed to have,” replied the girl. Her tone was curiously musing

and confidential. “May I look up now?”

“Surely. ‘You’ll like the view.”

The ball, rising high, had landed upon the edge of the green and rolled

to within ten feet of the cup.

“Oh!” she cried. “Do you suppose I could do it again?”

“Any number of times, if you’ll keep your eye on the star.”

“But one could not carry about a box of stars in a match, could one?”

“One could. But it won’t be necessary. Two weeks’ practice at that will

get you clean out of the Little Eyolf habit.”

“Will it, indeed? But why do you look so intently at the spot?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Jeremy hastily. “It was your boot--I mean, I

was thinking what that queer old codger Eli Wade said when I went after

your boots.”

“And was _that_ golf?” inquired Miss Ames with a demure and candid air.

“No? Then, if you do not mind, we will postpone it, shall we not?”

“Stung!” confessed Jeremy. “We shall.”

The bestarred second round cut no less than five strokes from the score

of the gratified pupil and her even more highly pleased instructor. This

in spite of the fact that she had once lifted her head and perpetrated a

lamen table foozle, whereupon Jeremy gravely pasted one of the stars on

the toe of her left boot: “To keep you reminded,” he explained.

“But,” he added, “you’ve got to clip at least three more strokes off to

be safe. That’ll take you all your time.”

It took a disproportionate amount of Jeremy Robson’s, too, which, to do

him justice, he did not begrudge. As a corollary to the morning lessons

he took to dropping in at the Pritchard mansion of an evening to discuss

some of the more abstruse points of the game, where he found himself in

active competition with the picked youth of the University and the town,

for Miss Marcia gathered a court as irresistibly as a flower gathers

bees. Quite unjustifiably Jeremy was inclined to sulk a bit over this,

unmindful of the favor of the gods in affording him her undivided

companionship in those early morning hours. Whereupon the gods, as

is their custom, withdrew their unappreciated bestowals. Buddy Higman

discovered the golf practice and straightway volunteered as caddy.

Jealousy as well as desire to be of service to the liege lady prompted

his offer, which was straightway accepted. So the morning practice

continued while bobolink from his daisied choir-loft (no longer invaded

by balls wandering from the straight and narrow path which leads to

the House of Bogie) alternately cheered and jeered at this chaperoned

companionship.

One stroke, two strokes, and finally five strokes were subtracted from

the aspirant’s nine-hole score. Her master gave her his blessing and

told her to go in and win. In the Varsity competition, she qualified

with a highly respectable round, and in the play-off for the team,

won her place. The team captain posted the choice for the yearly match

against Kirk College on the athletic bulletin, one line of which read:

No. 4--M. Ames.

In special celebration of the event, the pupil accepted an invitation to

dine at the Country Club that evening with the instructor.

“Will you make an agreement?” she asked, as they faced each other across

the little table, pleasantly remote in a far corner of the veranda.

“Unsight-unseen?” he smiled. “All right. I’ll swap.”

“That is quite too American for me. But you agree. Then let us not speak

the word ‘golf’ all this evening. I am tired of it.”

“Stale,” commented the expert. “You must lay off for a week. Well, let’s

forget it. What shall we talk about?”

“What are you doing here in Fenchester?”

He smiled at the directness of the question. “Plain and fancy

reporting.”

“You do not seem to belong here.”

“What makes you think that?”

She considered him meditatively. “I suppose it was your clothes, first.

You dress differently from the others. More like the men I have known

over there.”

“Remnants of past glory,” he assured her lightly. “I have n’t always

lived here, you know.”

“Where then? Do you mind my asking?”

“Not a bit. I’ve drifted about doing worthless things for several years.

Philadelphia mainly, New York a little. Getting myself mis-educated. You

see, I’m something of a failure.”

“You should not say that even in fun. I do not like to hear it.”

“It is n’t in fun. Ask my aged and highly respectable great-aunt, Miss

Greer, in Philadelphia, and you’ll learn something to my disadvantage.”

“I shall,” said the girl gravely, “if I ever go back there. Did you live

with her?”

“For a time. After my college course she sent me on a year’s tour and

then made me take one of those ornamental post-graduate courses that

lead into the lily-fingered occupations that are neither professions nor

business. She had a fond hope that I’d take to diplomacy.”

“No!” said the girl with unflattering surprise. “I know many diplomats.

I do not think you would be successful there.”

“I’m about as diplomatic as a punch in the eye,” admitted her companion.

“The old lady considered it plumb disgusting of me not to take to

refined international mendacity. But then I did n’t take to much of

anything else that she laid out for me. I had vulgar tastes. I wanted to

go into the newspaper business, and when I’d learnt it, have Great-Aunt

kindly buy me a paper to play with. Great-Aunt did n’t see it that way.

She cut me off with a small amount of hard cash and a large amount

of hard talk, and I took a School of Journalism course and eventually

drifted out here because I liked what I remembered of the town and

wanted to bore in where I was n’t hampered by friends and acquaintances.

Does that strike you as a record of glowing success? Considering that

I’m nearly twenty-seven years old, and have n’t made a scratch on the

face of the world yet?”

“But you began late,” condoned his companion. “And you are still

learning. But I cannot see why your aunt should object to your wishing

to own a newspaper. One would say, a harmless ambition.”

“One that I’m quite unlikely to realize, now. As for its being

harmless, why, my dear child--excuse the freedom of an aged

golf-professor--there’s a charge of dynamite in every font of type.”

“Then you have a penchant for high explosives?”

“Have I? I don’t think I’d put it that way,” mused Jeremy. “I’ve a taste

for adventure. And running a newspaper of your own has always seemed to

me about the liveliest and most adventurous job going. But I don’t want

to blow things up.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Oh, just to have a hand in things, in a real, live American community

like this, where the soil is good and new ideas sprout. I’d like to get

into the political fight, too. A really good one, I mean, with something

worth aiming at.”

“That I can understand. But I still fail to make you fit into this

environment.”

“What about yourself?” he countered “Have n’t you rather the air of

coming out of the great world and condescending to this raw and rural

town?”

“Have I? Have I been condescending to you?”

“If you had, it would be more than I deserve,” he said contritely. “I’d

no business to say that. And I did n’t mean it, anyway. But this is a

queer place for you to be, is n’t it?”

“Not for my purposes?”

“Are you specializing at Old Central?”

“One might call it that. I made inquiries for the most typically

American college, and a list was made up for me. I chose the University

of Centralia to be with my mother’s cousin, Miss Pritchard.”

“Just like that? All yourself?”

“All myself,” she assented gravely.

“You came here to get Americanized?”

“Yes. My mother married again. A German. A man of great scientific

attainments and high position. He is very gentle and vague and

absent-minded, and good to me. And when I told them that I would like

to take my own money and come here to my own country for a year

before”--she hesitated almost imperceptibly--“before anything was

settled for me, he consented. Think what a wrench it must have been for

his old-world prejudices against emancipated women and all that!”

“Yet I don’t think you need Americanizing. You’re a real American type

if there ever was one.”

She flushed a little. “I like to hear that. My father would have liked

it. What makes you say it?”

“It’s--it’s your honesty, I think. There’s a quality of frankness about

you that could be--well, almost brutal, I think. Do you know what I

mean?”

“I suppose I am a crank. That is American enough, is it not?” she

laughed. “A crank about the truth. I hate anything that even suggests

a lie, or a dodging, or an evasion. So perhaps I should not like your

newspaper profession.”

“But that’s just it!” he cried eagerly. “If one had a paper of one’s

own, he could make his own rules for the game.”

“If he were big enough--and brave enough.”

“Brave enough,” he repeated. “Eli Wade said that about you, too. Reading

your character from your shoes, you know. That you had courage and

honesty. I think he thought it a rare thing in a woman.”

“It is not,” she flashed. “But if I have, it is no credit to me. I have

wholly loved and trusted only one person on earth. That was my father,

and he was the soul of truth. So, some of my friends laugh at me a

little and think me a crank, because I have--what do you Americans--_we_

Americans say?--no use for any one whom I cannot wholly trust.”

“And you would be hard, too,” he said.

“Perhaps. If I were, it would be because I could not help it. I think

that I do things because something inside makes me before I have even

time to consider, sometimes.”

“Like your standing up alone at the Federated German meeting. By the

way, I brought my story of it for you to read.”

She held out her hand for the proofs. “I am glad,” she said.

She read it, slowly and studiously, and as she read an expression, new

to Jeremy in the changeful charm of her face, puzzled his watchful eyes.

“It is very vivid,” she said, “and enthusiastic.”

She rose. On their way back to the Pritchard house she plied him

with questions bearing on the technique of journalism. As he stood,

bareheaded under the porch light looking up at her, she asked:

“May I keep the proof of the article?”

“Yes. You like it, then?”

“I love it. But I am glad that it was not published.”

“Why?”

“There is too much Me in it.” She paused. “Did I seem to you like

that--then?”

“Yes. And more.”

She shook her head. “I am glad that it was not published,” she repeated.

“It would have said to too many people--” She hesitated.

“What?” he asked.

For the first time her eyes faltered before his. They were hesitant, and

deep-shadowed and troubled.

“What?” he repeated.

“What should have been said to only one.”

“Marcia!” he cried.

But the door had closed on her and he barely heard her soft-toned

“Good-night” from beyond its jealous interception.

CHAPTER VI

ABSTENTION from the art and practice of golf for one week had been

Professor Robson’s ukase. Had he foreseen the course of more personal

events he would never have issued it. For he now had no opportunity of

seeing his pupil alone. Nothing so direct as avoidance could be charged

against her. But since that parting on the Pritchard porch, he had never

been able to achieve so much as two minutes of her undivided time.

Her eyes, when they met his only to be swiftly withdrawn, were sweetly

troubled. The Eternal Feminine within her was, for the time at least,

in flight. And along those paths of delicate elusiveness, the clumsy and

pursuing feet of man stumble and trip. Jeremy’s soul was sorely tried

and not less sorely puzzled.

If he found difficulties in Marcia’s attitude, his own future course

with regard to her was dubious. What could he, in his position and with

his resources, ask of her? To wait? Certainly nothing more than that.

And was even that much fair to her? His own feeling was simplicity

itself. Life had, in these few short weeks of association, summed and

compressed itself into his love for Marcia Ames. Until that

abrupt change in the tone of their relations brought about by her

half-acceptance of his devotion, she had never evinced anything more

than a frank and confident comradeship. Now he felt that he might

speak--if he could find opportunity. That he could not, almost caused

him to accuse Marcia of unfairness. Yet could he honorably ask her to

marry him and tie herself to a meager and as yet unpromising career?

Within himself Jeremy had begun to assume that confidence of future

success which comes with the assured sense of workmanship. He would

cheerfully gamble his own future on it. But how could he ask her to risk

hers? Even supposing that she cared for him! There was the thought that

ached; the uncertainty of it. In any case he had to know how it stood

with him in her heart.

Upon her inviolable truthfulness he could depend for a full and fair

answer, if he were able to state his case. He knew that all her frank

and unevasive courage would answer to his demand; that she would look

that fate, or any other, steadily in the eyes. But not before her own

good time. And that the time was not yet, became sufficiently apparent,

one week before the match when the lessons were resumed, for with

the resumption Buddy Higman was quietly established at once as caddy,

chaperon, and dragon with the added qualities of the modestly adhesive

burdock. The skill and technique of “No. 4.--M. Ames” prospered and

improved mightily, which is more than can be said of the disposition of

her instructor.

Some men’s work would have suffered. Not Jeremy’s. He was of that

fortunate temperament which, keeping its troubles to itself, boils them

out into steam and transforms the steam into energy. Besides, he had now

“the grip of his pen.” He derived a glowing satisfaction from the expert

performance of his craft. The editorial page was hospitable to him,

especially for contributions in lighter vein. Many special assignments

for work out of the ordinary, calling for a knack of description or

characterization, came to him. His writings were beginning to earn

the knighthood conferred by the clipping shears and the paste-pot.

Newspapers in larger cities than Fenches-ter copied and privately asked

questions about them. But what made it all so worth while, what gave

a touch of exaltation to the dogged purpose for success, was the

conviction that all this forwarded him upon the road which led to

Marcia.

The tournament with Kirk College, on the Fenchester Country Club

grounds, was now two days away. Jeremy had asked for and obtained the

assignment to cover it. He had long before applied for and received the

job of caddying for No. 4 of the team opposing his own college, which

was regarded by the visiting Kirks as an ignoble instance of loyalty

corrupted by the baser passions. However, Jeremy was perfectly willing

that Kirk should win; rather hoped it would, in fact, provided only the

No. 4 of Old Central beat her man. He believed her capable of doing

it, unless her nerve faltered, which he deemed improbable. On her most

recent performances she was from two to four strokes lower than any one

but himself and Buddy Higman appreciated.

Important though the event was to Jeremy Robson, the authorities on The

Record considered it rather a waste of their brilliant youngster’s time.

However, they were appeased by the cropping out meantime of a story so

much in the Robson line that it might have been made to order for him.

Wackley, the managing editor, outlined it to him, when he arrived in the

morning.

“Robson, do you know a queer old bat up on Banks Street who runs a shoe

surgery?”

“Eli Wade? Yes; quite well.”

“He’s a nut of the old Know-Nothing kind, is n’t he? Hates all

foreigners and all that?”

“He’s a pretty hard-shelled Yankee.”

“Well; he’s done it this time. Made a fine young riot for himself last

night. It seems he’s been pasting cartoons and mottoes in his show

window; and some of the younger fellows from the Deutscher Club, who

pass there on their way home, naturally got sore. Last night with a few

beers aboard, they stopped and gave him a raree serenade. Out comes the

old boy in his nighty and makes ’em a red-hot speech. They give him

the whoop, and he begins to damn ’em all back to Germany.”

“Yes; he’s got fighting stuff in him,” agreed Jeremy.

“Too much for his own good. Somebody ups with a rock, and down comes the

big boot over the door. Well, the old boy goes dippy over that. Dives

inside and grabs up a hammer and right into them. First thing you know,

they have him on a rail--a scantling from that new building on the

corner--and are yelling for tar. It might have been serious for the old

boy, but just then along comes Andy Galpin of The Guardian. You know

him; he’s some young husky. Guard on the O. C. team for three years.

Well, he bucks the center and lays out a couple of the merry villagers

and there’s a pretty mix-up, and I understand Galpin got one in the

eye that did n’t improve his make-up. But the boys were sick of the fun

anyway, and they let Galpin get away with it and take old Wade home.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and sleeping it off, Wade gets all

het up, and swears out warrants and they’re going to thrash it out in

police court this noon, in time for the edition. Probably Wade ’ll make a

speech. Anyhow, there’ll be a circus when he goes on the stand. We want

a rattling good story on it; and put in your best touches on the old

boy. He’ll do for a local character to hang all sorts of stories on,

later.”

“But look here, Mr. Wackley: I know Eli Wade pretty well. He’s--he’s a

sort of friend of mine.”

“What if he is? You can have fun with him, can’t you? He won’t know

the difference. And if he does, he won’t care. Those fanatical guys are

crazy for publicity. He’ll eat it up.”

It was Jeremy’s settled intention, so he told himself, as he set out for

court, to write an account which, while lively, should fairly set forth

his friend’s side. When he saw Eli Wade at court his heart misgave him,

the Boot & Shoe Surgeon looked so whitely wrathful. The proceedings

dwindled into nothing. The “life” was out of the story, quite to one

reporter’s relief, when his evil genius inspired Eli Wade to address the

court. At the outset he was simple and dignified. But counsel for the

serenaders interpolated some well-timed taunts which roused him to

indignation. He had not slept that night, for shame of the treatment

to which he had been subjected; and his self-control was in abeyance.

Indignation, as he answered the taunts, waxed to fury. He burst into

a savage and absurd invective, aimed at “German interlopers,” “foreign

clubs that run our city,” and the like; his voice shrilling louder and

louder until he was drowned out by the uncontrollable laughter of the

court-room. It was all quite absurd and pitiable. Instinctively Jeremy’s

pencil took it down. Here was his story, ready to hand.

As he sat in the office, the grip of characterization settled upon him.

Oddments and gleams of past conversations in the “Infirmary” came back

to him, and he embodied them. Stroke by stroke there grew up under his

hand a portrait, crude from haste but vivid, telling, and a stimulant to

mirth, not always of the kindliest. It was not intentionally unfair; it

was never malicious in purpose. But it was the more deadly in effect. By

the magic transformation of print it made out of an unpolished, simple,

generous, fervent, and thoughtful artisan, a laughable homunculus. Yet

there was in it no element of “fake.” Jeremy could have defended it

at all points. Any newspaper judgment would have credited it with

due fidelity to facts. The sum-total was a subtle and gross

misrepresentation. Had the writer read it over he would perhaps have

seen this for himself. But there was no time. He barely caught the

edition. Wackley’s: “Great stuff, my boy! You’ll hear of this,” happily

distracted him from the stirrings of a conscience which faintly wished

to know how Eli Wade would take it.

“You’re doing golf to-morrow,” continued the managing editor. “Don’t

bother to come to the office first.” Profiting by this, Jeremy, an

hour before match time, called at Miss Pritchard’s for Marcia. He was

informed that she had left on an errand, but would meet him at the

Country Club. When, just before the first pair teed up, she appeared,

her mentor was startled, she looked so wan and languid.

“Good Heavens!” said Jeremy in a whisper. “You have n’t let this thing

get on your nerves?”

She shook her head. Her eyes did not avoid his now; but the changeful

lights seemed to have dwindled to the merest flicker in inscrutable

depths.

“Let me get you a cup of coffee. That’ll brace you up.”

“I shall be all right,” she said with an effort.

At the call for the fourth pair she stepped to the tee and hit a ball

straight down the center for 160-odd yards. It was the virtue of her

game that she was straight on the pin, nine shots out of ten, thereby

overcoming the handicap of greater distance sure to be against her

in college competition. Great and grinful was the satisfaction of her

trainer at observing the demeanor of her opponent. When he was presented

to her, that gentleman, a sightly and powerful youth notable for his

long drives, took one extended, admiring, and astounded survey of “M.

Ames”--he had n’t known what the bewildering fates held in store for him

inquired privately but passionately of high Heaven and his team-mates

how a fellow was going to keep his eye on the ball with a vision like

_that_ to look at, and entered upon a disastrous career by nearly

slaying, with his first drive, a squirrel in a tree a good hundred yards

off the course. He recovered in time to record an unparalleled ten for

the first hole. M. Ames, dead on the pin, scored a correct five. Everson

(the Kirk boy) contributed three putts on the second green, and M. Ames

won it in a sound four. But as his pupil took her stance for a brassie,

after a respectable tee-shot from the third, Jeremy perceived with

dismay that her hands were shaking. Up went her head, as she swung, and

the ball darted from the toe of her club into the rough. She was out in

three, but again she succumbed to star-gazing on her mashie shot, and

her opponent still triangulating the course like a care-free surveyor,

was able to halve it. From then on, Jeremy the mentor was in agony.

Except off the tees, where she clung to her beautiful, free-limbed,

lissome swing, as it were by instinct, No. 4 for Old Central topped,

sliced, pulled, and scarified the helpless turf. The gallant foeman was

so distressed at her obviously unusual ineptitudes, that his own game

went glimmering down the grassy bypaths that lead to traps and bunkers.

Only this involuntary gallantry saved M. Ames from practical extinction.

As it was, she was two down at the end of the first nine, with a dismal

fifty-four. As they left the ninth green she turned to Jeremy: “Would

you mind not caddying for me the rest of the match?”

“But Marcia!” he cried, aghast. “What’s wrong?”

“You have got on my nerves.”

“I have n’t said a word except to steady you.”

“I am sorry,” she said inflexibly.

An angry gleam flashed in Jeremy’s eyes. “Of course, if you feel that

way about it--”

“I do. I am sorry,” she repeated.

“Do you mind my following you?” he asked with semisardonic intent.

“I should rather you did not.”

“Well, good Heavens! Something has happened to spoil your nerve.”

“No.”

“Then what--”

“Come for me after the match. We can talk then.” With this Jeremy had to

be content. Relieved of his presence, M. Ames summoned all her force to

the rescue of her nerves, and astonished her opponent with a forty-four,

steadily and carefully played. The match, which had originally been

counted upon by a careful captain as a probable win for Old Central, was

a tie, under the scoring system agreed upon.

Dismal misgivings, meanwhile, had beset Jeremy Robson, the promising

young reporter of The Record. Already he was, in his heart, on the

defensive when, as he and Marcia turned out at the gate, she said:

“Did you write the article about Eli Wade?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it must have been yours,” said her lips. The tone said, “I

hoped it was not.”

“That’s a good sign, for people to recognize my style. What did you

think of it?”

“It was clever.”

There was no warmth in the tone. Rather a reluctant relinquishment of

disbelief.

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“I did not like it. I hated it.”

“Oh, that’s the personal view,” he said indulgently. “Perhaps.”

“The Bellair Journal has offered me a job on the strength of it.”

“Were you obliged to take that--what is the term--that assignment?”

“A reporter takes what is handed out to him.”

“I suppose so. That would be the danger. I should fear that.”

“Fear what? I can’t imagine you fearing anything.”

“I should fear getting into that habit of mind. Complaisant. Servile.”

“That’s an ugly word, Marcia,” he said, flushing.

“I am sorry. Perhaps there is a side to it that I do not understand. But

surely, oh, surely, you need not have written it in that way!”

“My dear girl! Personal feeling has no relation to newspaper work. I

can’t juggle with facts because the man happens to be my friend. That is

n’t honest.”

“Is _this_ honest?” She held up the clipping which she took from her

pocket.

Jeremy quailed before the hurtness of her eyes, which was wonder more

than reproach.

“There is n’t a word in it,” he began, “that--”

“There is not a thought in it that is not a cruel injustice.”

“You’ve no right to say that.”

“That is true. You remind me.”

“Oh, Marcia,” he cried miserably. “Don’t take it that way. I’d have

thrown up my job sooner than write it if I’d known that you’d feel it

so.”

“It does not matter about me. But you! How could you have done it! How

could you have used his gentle, sweet, simple philosophy--his talks

between friends in the shop--to make a mock of him?”

“I did n’t. I swear I did n’t.”

She put the clipping into his hand. Re-read, now, the words were

self-damnatory. Jeremy groaned.

“It has hurt him so terribly,” she said.

“You’ve seen him?”

“Yes. He has resigned his place on the School Board. Mr. Dolge advised

him to get off before he was laughed off.”

Jeremy stared at the words of his facile portraiture as if they had

suddenly been informed with venom. “And he was so proud of it!” he

muttered.

“It was a large thing in his little life,” said the girl. “He feels

disgraced.”

Wackley’s easy and cynical assumption that the subject of the sketch

would be “crazy for publicity” recalled itself to Jeremy. He swore

beneath his breath. “When did you see Eli?

“This morning. At the hospital.”

“The hospital! Is he injured that badly?”

“No. You had not heard? It is Mr. Galpin, a friend of Eli’s--who stood

by him.”

“Andy Galpin! How bad is it?”

“Much worse than they supposed. He will be nearly blind in one eye.”

“Good Lord!”

“And is he a friend of yours, also; Mr. Galpin?”

“Andy? Yes; of course he is.”

“But you made no inquiry about him.”

“I did n’t know.”

Her eyes, steady and deep-lighted, still did not judge him, still

pathetically wondered at him.

“Marcia!” he broke out. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but

you. I have n’t had anything in my heart--”

“Please!”

He stopped, appealing to her with his look.

“I think you have to think of Eli Wade.”

Jeremy winced and was silent. Their car pulled up at the Pritchard gate.

She got out, but did not ask him to come in.

“The worst of it is that it’s hurt you,” he muttered. “I did n’t know

that you cared so much about him.”

“It was not he that I cared so much about,” returned Marcia steadily.

“It was you.”

She turned and passed into the house. Try as he might, on his way to the

hospital to see Andrew Galpin, Jeremy could derive from that low-toned

avowal neither hope nor comfort for a sick heart and a grilling

conscience.

The doctors would not let him see Galpin.

As by tradition bound, his “story” of the golf match focused on the one

and unique girl-player on the team. She was the “human interest”

center. So skillfully did he skirt the edge of her bad play that only an

analysis of the score would apprise the reader of the partial failure.

Her good shots were described in glowing terms. To her, the casual

reader would have supposed, belonged the chief credit on Old Central’s

side; and the copy-reader, who was no golfer, in good faith headed it

“Miss Ames Gains Tie for O. C.”; the final team score having also been

all even, though it should have been Old Central’s victory had No. 4

played up to her standard. The writing of the article cheered up the

writer notably. Here was no wounding word or acid-bitten phrase. There

was only the clear purpose to please. Again Jeremy had been caught and

carried in the whirl of his semi-creative enthusiasm.

The quality was still there when he read it over on the following day.

Intent upon his sunshine-scattering he sent an early proof to “M. Ames.”

He felt, on the whole, that he had been, if not unjustly, at least

untenderly treated. Overnight he had been able to persuade himself that

the Wade sketch represented a fine type of loyalty to profession rising

triumphant above personal feelings. All that was needed to reestablish

him firmly in the conviction of righteousness, was Marcia’s appreciation

of his golf-story. He went to the Pritchard house to receive it. Marcia

was not there. She had gone for a few days’ visit at the Magnus Laurens’

country place. Jeremy sent a hasty, reproachful and alarmed note after

her. Why had she left without a word? What did it all mean? When was she

coming back? When could he see her and explain? As a composition it was

distinctly below standard for the rising young star of The Record. But

at least it could boast the highly-prized quality of heart-interest.

Jeremy called again at the hospital to see Andrew Galpin. That battered

warrior received him with immitigable cheerfulness.

“Ay-ah,” he explained. “Something busted inside the eye. It ain’t as bad

as they thought. They’re going to save quite a glimmer of sight in it,

and ‘my right eye is a good little eye,”’ he chanted. “Back on the job

in a week or so.”

Jeremy, craving solace, asked whether his friend had seen the Eli Wade

story; then, remembering his disability, corrected himself hastily.

“Sure I saw it. Or had it seen for me. I made ’em read me both papers

from end to end. That was a crackajack story. You keep on like this,

young fellow, and Fenchester ’ll be too small to hold you.”

“I’m afraid it hurt Eli Wade’s feelings,” said the visitor hesitantly.

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“Ay-ah. He spoke of it.”

“What did he say?”

“We-ell; he said--Sure you want to know?” Jeremy nodded. “He said, ‘I’d

never have believed it from the way he wears his shoes.’ Like the poor

old nut, ain’t it?”

“Andy, was the story so rotten?”

“I just told you it was a crackajack piece of work.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my doing it at all.”

“It was your assignment, was n’t it?”

“Certainly, it was,” assented Jeremy, comforted and justified. “I had to

take it or quit my job, did n’t I?”

“Oh, I guess you’re stronger than that on The Record.”

“What would you have done in my place?”

“Me? Oh, I’m a reporter. I reckon I’d have done the story.” But there

was no conviction in Galpin’s tone. Jeremy wished he could have seen the

bandaged eyes. He mistrusted that they would have avoided his.

“That’s part of the business,” he declared, self-defensively.

“That’s the hell of the business,” said Andrew Galpin. Jeremy left the

hospital feeling that Marcia Ames and Andrew Galpin had said much the

same thing to him about his article, in widely different terms.

Marcia’s reply to his note came several days later. Its brevity did not

conceal an indefinable and disturbing reserve. She would see him, she

wrote, when she returned. With the note was inclosed the proof of the

golf report. Its margin carried a penciled note.

“Can you not see that this only makes it worse?” Jeremy read his

cherished report once more, and saw. It was a lie.

CHAPTER VII

LAKE SKOHOTA thrusts a long and slender arm past Fenchester to throw it

cherishingly about a tiny island, cut off from the University campus and

made part of it again by an arched bridge overhanging dappled waters.

Willows bending from the islet’s bank weave their thousand-fingered

enchantments above the dreaming shallows. The subtle spice of sedge

and marsh-bloom blows from it to disperse its spell upon the air that

whispers a never-finished tale of secrecy and sorcery to the trees. It

is a place of witchery.

The sheen of countless stars glowed above the bridge and wavered below

it, as two figures emerged from the pathway and paused at the summit

of the arch to lean and look down through the darkness at the blackly

opalescent gleam of the waters. A canoe stole around the bend and

slipped beneath them, the stroke of its paddles accentuated in cool,

delicious plashes of sound as it entered the arch.

“Another two,” said the soft and happy voice of a girl, rising to them;

and a boyish voice answered:

“The night is full of them.”

The canoe merged with the darkness. The two figures on the bridge,

silent, followed it with their blind speculations into an unknown world.

From far across the open spaces of the lake came the music of women’s

voices blended, which the night breeze hushed to hear; a modulation of

wistful, minor strains:

“In dreams she grows not older

The lands of Dream among,

Though all the world wax colder

Though all the songs be sung.”

The latter couplet was repeated, a haunting, yearning, falling melody,

that suddenly swelled and rose into the splendid, fulfilling major:

“In dreams doth he behold her

Still fair and kind and young.”

The taller figure on the bridge stirred from a dream. “That is your

song, Marcia.”

“Yes,” said the girl, a little away from him in the darkness. “I

arranged it for them, to be sung so; in parts.”

“You sang it the first day we really began to know each other.”

“Very long ago,” she assented, with her serene gravity. “Two months, is

it not?”

“Or years. Or centuries. It does n’t seem to matter.”

“I am glad they sang that to-night. For us,” she concluded, after the

briefest of pauses.

He put his hand over hers, which rested on the stone coping of the

bridge. She did not stir nor speak. But it was his hand, not hers, that

trembled. A heavy rowboat came lumbering down the reach, two students at

the oars.

“Politics for me,” said one confidently. “We’re going to run the country

from this end now. I’m for Mart Embree’s band-wagon.”

“Too dull,” said another. “Gimme a touch of Nuh York.”

“It’s a rough world for poor, lost lambs like us to be spilled into,

anyway,” boomed a resonant bass from the stern seat, and their laughter

died away around the bend of the island.

Marcia Ames freed her fingers from her companion’s clasp.

“Jem,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

Her figure, dim-white in the darkness, neither withdrew from nor

swayed toward him. But he thought that he saw her head half turn with a

sorrowful intent.

“Jem,” she said again, “I came here to--”

“I love you, Marcia,” he repeated with a still insistence.

“Wait. I am going away.”

“When?”

“Very soon. This week. Perhaps sooner.”

“For how long?”

“Will you not understand, Jem? I am going away.” The quiet repetition

fell, chill and deadening, upon his heart.

“From me?”

“From everything here.”

“Why?”

“I must.”

“Then you don’t care!”

She was silent.

“You’re going back?” He made an obvious effort to gather his force for

the determinative word. “Abroad?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll follow you,” he declared grimly.

“Now you are angry with me, are you not?” She spoke with a sorrowful,

disappointed intonation.

“Have n’t I a right to be?”

“Have you?”

“Tell me, if you can, that you have n’t cared for me a bit; not at

any time. You see,” he added with conviction but without triumph, “you

can’t!”

“If I had ever cried--in my life--since I was a child--I think--I should

cry now,” she said, in little, uneven sections of speech.

“Marcia!” All the anger passed away from Jem, leaving him shaken. “Don’t

feel that way. What has happened? What have I done to change you toward

me?”

“I cannot tell you--more than I have told you.”

“Try,” he urged. “Let’s have it out!”

“I am not clever at explaining. Not--not such things as this. There is

something that rises up inside and--and forbids. Oh, Jem! You must know,

without my putting it into words.”

“It’s that cursed Wade story, of course. But that’s because you don’t

understand. Surely, between you and me a--a petty little matter such as

that--”

“Petty!”

“Why, Marcia, it’s just part of the day’s work. Ask any newspaper man.

Ask Andrew Galpin.”

“Who has perhaps half-spoiled his life by defending his friend.”

“That’s different--I’d have done that.”

“Would you?”

“Can’t you believe that of me, Marcia? Do you think I’m a coward?”

“Falsehood is always cowardly,” she said very low. “Perhaps I am

abnormal about it. I cannot help it. I was bred that way.”

“But try to be fair to me,” he pleaded.

“Fair to you? I was more than that. I could not believe that you had

written it. When I went into Eli Wade’s shop that morning there was a

strange, violent white-haired little man there with him--”

“Nick Milliken.”

“Yes. He said what--what you have said; that it was all part of the

day’s work; that you were no worse than any other reporter. He said that

you had boasted to him that nobody could control your pen.”

Jeremy groaned. “It’s true.”

“And then he laughed, and said things about you that I would not endure

to hear--as I told him.”

“You defended me against Milliken!”

“I tried to.”

“Can’t you defend me against yourself, Marcia?”

He could hear her long, slow-drawn breath before she answered. “I could

defend you against _yourself_, in my own heart. But I cannot defend the

ideal of you that I had built up, against what you have done to it.”

“Could n’t you have told me?”

“Told you what, Jem?”

“That I did represent an ideal to you..Think what it would have meant to

me to--to know that.”

Something told him that she was smiling in the darkness and that there

was pain and pity as well as a sweet mockery in the smile. “Could I tell

you that before you told me--what you have told me to-night?”

“That I love you? You can’t pretend that you did n’t know it. But I’d no

business to tell you then: I’ve no business to tell you now,” he added

gloomily. “What have I got to offer a girl like you!”

“That would not matter,” she answered him proudly. “It is the other that

matters.”

“Wade, again! I can’t see that it matters so much, even to him. How was

I to guess that it would hurt a simple-minded old dreamer of that sort?”

“Have you been to see him since?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The direct query had the stunning force of accusation. “You’re right,”

he said dully. “I knew all the time it was a rotten thing to do, only

I would n’t face it. And I’ve kept away from the Boot & Shoe Infirmary

because I was afraid to go there. It’s curious,” he added, in a flat,

detached manner of speech, “how the little things of life--the things

you think are little--wreck the whole business for you, when it’s too

late to do anything.”

“Jem!” gasped the girl. “I cannot bear to hear you talk so. It--it is

unlike you. It hurts me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, dear, Heaven knows. I only want to get this

clear. You--you think I’m unfit to be--that I’m untrustworthy. Is that

it?”

“Am I being very cruel?” she whispered.

“You’ve answered. It’s the truth that’s cruel, not you.”

“I must trust. Absolutely. Or--there is nothing.”

“I see. When do you go?”

Of a sudden her strong young arms were about his shoulders; her hot,

sweet face was pressed against his. He felt the quick throbbing of the

vein in her temple, and was shaken to the foundations of his being with

the dear and bewildering shock of it.

“Oh, Jem!” Her whisper fluttered close to his ear. “Why do you _let_ me

go! Never let me go. It breaks my heart to go. To leave you. Never to

see you again. Why must I go!”

“You mustn’t. You shan’t. Marcia, darling! After this you can’t leave

me.”

He lifted her head to press his lips upon her eyes. They were hot

and dry. But when he sought her mouth, her quick hand interposed. As

abruptly as she had come into his arms she escaped their jealous clasp

and stood back from him.

“How could I!” she panted. “It was unfair of me. I never meant it.”

“You can’t tell me that--now,” he answered, with a new note of joy and

triumph.

“It was wrong--so wrong,” she mourned. “It did not mean what--what you

hoped. For I must go.”

“Go?” he repeated incredulously. “And not come back?”

“Oh, _want_ me to come back, Jem!” she pleaded. “Keep wanting me to

come back. If anything could ever bring me, that would. But it will not.

Nothing can. I know it. I am holding to a dream.”

“I’ve lost mine,” said Jem. “And everything in life with it--if you go,

now.”

“Forgive me. And believe that I never meant to hurt you. If I have, it

was my ignorance.”

“Ignorance? You? I wish I could see your face now, to see how wise it

is!”

“You are smiling at me again,” she said. “But I am not wise. I am very

foolish. And I am very young. Jem, do you know how old I am?”

“Sometimes I’ve thought you must be at least a hundred.”

“I am not eighteen yet, Jem. Indeed, I am not. I once told you that I

was old, as a child. So you must forgive me and believe me.”

“I’ll do anything but give you up.”

“That, too,” she said very low. She set her hand trustfully within his

arm. “Come. You must take me home.”

It was a silent walk; the girl full of musings; the man of a grim,

dogged determination. At the rose-bowered steps he took her hand.

“To-morrow,” he said. “I’ll be here directly I finish my work. No; I’ve

got one errand I must do first.”

“What is that?” she asked wanly.

“I’m going to see Eli Wade.”

“Yes. I am glad,” said she.

He stopped for a moment at the gate, hoping for another sight of her.

She had turned up the hall light and now stood in the doorway, beneath

the roses. Her face was inexpressibly wistful, inexpressibly lovely,

inexpressibly lonely. The subtle and changeful eyes stared widely into

the darkness. Suddenly she threw her arm across them with a desolate,

renunciatory gesture and turned away.

The shoes which Eli Wade had repaired for Jeremy Robson were

leaden-soled to carry home a leaden and foreboding heart, that night.

*****

With the new day came new courage to the lover. Marcia cared for him,

by her own tacit confession. After all, his fault had been a minor

one; there was sound defense for it: he could convince her of that, and

overbear her intention of leaving him. What he failed to perceive was

this: that the girl was concerned, not with a fault, but with a flaw

of character divined by her subtle and powerful intuition. But a world

without Marcia Ames was unthinkable to young Jeremy Robson, considering

the prospect calmly in the light of day; and being unthinkable, there

remained only to devise the best means of combating her illogical and

even--he would go thus far--unfair judgment of himself. Growing more

assured and comfortable in his mind, as the day wore on, he contrived to

finish up his work early, and left the office at a jubilant skip, intent

on getting to Montgomery Street with the least possible delay. He was

n’t even going by way of the Boot & Shoe Infirmary. Eli Wade could wait.

On the sidewalk he was accosted by young Burton Higman, who glanced

sidelong at him out of ashamed-looking, swollen eyes.

“Cut it short, Buddy,” said the hasting Jem.

“She’s gone,” said the small boy.

Jem stopped dead in his tracks. “Who’s gone?”

“Miss Marcy.”

“Where? When?” demanded Jem wildly.

“Chicago. Three-thirty-seven,” returned the precise Buddy.

A pall of dimness settled down over the glaring street; hot, stark,

sterile dimness through which the figures of trivial folk moved

lifelessly on futile errands.

“Did she leave any message?” inquired Jem, presently, in a voice which

would have been life-like from a phonograph.

“Told me to tell you.”

“Why did she go--so soon?” The query was put, not to young Mr. Higman

but to a blind and juggernaut providence.

It was young Mr. Higman, however, who responded. “Afraid,” he stated.

“Afraid? What of?”

“Herself. She told me so when she k-k-kissed me goodbye.” Buddy’s eyes

winked rapidly. “But she didn’t tell me to tell you that,” he reflected.

“Did she give you any other message?”

“Not exac’ly a message.”

“Go on! Out with it.”

“You need n’t _bite_ a feller,” expostulated young Mr. Higman. “She told

me if ever you got what you was after, to go to you an’ ast for a job,

when I needed it, for the sake of a mut--mut--some kind of friend.”

Jem registered a silent and pious vow. “Is that all?”

“Yes. Do I get the job?”

“If I can give it to you.”

“Say, Mr. Robson. I guess she meant you was that kind of friend. Are you

a friend of hern?”

Jem got it out at last: “Yes.”

Young Mr. Higman’s eyes became suddenly more strained and

ashamed-looking. “I’m goin’ to miss her somethin’ awful, Mr. Robson,” he

said. “Ain’t you?” But Mr. Robson had passed on. Buddy wondered whether

he had suffered a touch of the sun. He seemed uncertain in his walk.

CHAPTER VIII

IN the course of a long and varied life, Miss Editha Greer had been

consistently eccentric. In the close of it she was not less so. Witness

the following telegram received by her great-nephew, Jeremy Robson:

_Philadelphia, July 30, 1912_

_I am dead. Do not come to funeral. Letter follows._

_E. Greer._

To say that the recipient of this posthumous message was overcome with

grief, would be excessive. His feeling for his aged relative had been

one of mild and remote piety, relieved by an intermittent sense of

amusement, and impregnated with a vague dread of what she might do next.

No more next now for E. Greer. Jeremy was honestly sorry; not on his

own account, but for the old lady herself. She had so enjoyed life!

Doubtless she had relinquished it with courage; but, also, he felt

certain, with profound dissent from the verdict. But, having duly

dismissed him from consideration in her lifetime, what should she be

writing him about now that she was dead?

Like the telegram, the letter, when it arrived, proved to be an

anticipatory document. It dealt, in a frank and unflattering style,

with Jeremy’s expectations upon her property which, she observed

characteristically, was much less than most fools supposed.

_I have long considered you a bit of a ninny [continued this pleasing

document]. Nor have I valid cause to alter my opinion. But I recently

met at a country house a young woman who knows you. [Jeremy’s heart

performed a porpoise-roll within his breast.] She tells me that I am an

old fool. I interpret her expression and bearing, not her words, which

are that I do not understand you. Apparently she believes that she does.

If I left you all my money, she would perhaps marry you for it. On the

whole, however, I believe not. She has neglected much more brilliant

opportunities here. Moreover, when I put the question to her, she said

not. She added that I was impertinent, and that impertinence was no more

tolerable from the old to the young than from the young to the old. I

like your Miss Marcia Ames.

The point of importance is that she considers the modest, in fact I may

say nominal and complimentary, sum set apart for you in my will, quite

insufficient. We discussed it at length. She is possessed of a devil of

frankness. She maintains that I should leave you a modest competency.

She thinks that it might save your immortal soul, if I correctly

interpret her attitude. She thinks your immortal soul is worth saving.

She assumes that you have an immortal soul. She even appeared to think

that I have an immortal soul. Upon that moot point I shall be better

able to judge by the time this letter goes forward to you; but it is

improbable that I shall communicate any further or more authoritative

information.

She is a strange creature. You should have married her, though she is

far too old for you. A hundred years at least. I judge you might have

married her but lost your chance. [Here the reader groaned.] She might

have made a success of you. I gravely doubt whether my money can.

Do not hastily assume that the money is within your grasp. There is a

condition to be fulfilled. I believe that you will not fulfill it. She

believes that you will, even though she does not know what it is. Nor

shall you. Whether you receive a small pittance or a roundly comfortable

sum, depends now entirely upon yourself. I am still malicious enough--I

forget that I am now, as you read this, dead and safely buried--I was

still malicious enough to wish that I might see your struggles of mind

upon receiving this, the last communication wherewith you will ever be

troubled from

Your dutiful great-aunt,

E. Greer._

Perturbation over the prospect of comparative enrichment was quite

subordinated, as Jeremy read this curious epistle, to the turbulence

of emotion excited by the knowledge that Marcia had been interesting

herself so intimately in his affairs. So far, the joke turned against

Great-Aunt Greer. But she was more than avenged by the sting in her

surmise that Jem had forfeited his chance with Marcia. Where was Marcia?

If he got the money, or the assurance of it, why should he not set out

to find her, even though it took him across the world, and try once

more? Would she have the force to escape from him again? Was not her

flight the initial confession, upon which her queer relations with E.

Greer set the seal? Only as an afterthought came the consideration of

the condition upon which he was to secure the larger legacy. He could

not seem to get excited or disturbed over it. Nothing mattered much in

the bleak soul of Jeremy Robson but Marcia Ames. Great-Aunt Greer would

have been sorely disgusted! Or, perhaps she would n’t.

Three days thereafter a caller came to see Jeremy at The Record office.

His card indicated that he was Mr. Arthur Welton, representing the firm

of Hunt & Hunt, Attorneys, Philadelphia. His appearance indicated that

he was about Jeremy’s age. His bearing indicated that he was older than

Pharaoh’s uncle, and charged with world-destinies. Jeremy had a shrewd

guess that this was his first mission away from home.

Mr. Welton looked Jeremy over minutely and shook hands. The firm of Hunt

& Hunt, which he had the honor to represent, had charge of the affairs

of Miss Editha Greer, deceased, he informed Mr. Robson. Would Mr. Robson

kindly put on his coat?

“Do you want me to go out with you?” asked Jeremy.

“As you prefer.”

“What’s the matter with this? Nobody will interrupt us here.”

“Very well.” The age-old youth wrapped himself in an air of superior

expectancy.

“Go ahead,” said the reporter.

“The coat,” reminded Mr. Welton.

Jeremy was annoyed. “Why the devil should I put on a coat with the

mercury ramping around 90?”

“A mere formality,” murmured his visitor.

“Oh, very well!” growled Jeremy. He departed and presently returned,

fully and uncomfortably garmented.

Again Mr. Arthur Welton inspected him carefully. “You do not wear

mourning, I observe.”

“I do _not_.”

“Why not, may I ask?”

“Don’t believe in it. It’s a pagan custom and usually hypocritical.”

“I cannot agree with you,” retorted the other weightily. “On principle,

I cannot agree with you. In the present instance, would it be an

evidence of hypocrisy to have shown a formal mark of sorrow for the loss

of your great-aunt?”

“It would.”

“You felt, then, no affection or esteem for the late Miss Editha Greer?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“It is so much the business of my firm that I have traveled a thousand

miles to ascertain your attitude.”

“The condition!” cried Jeremy, aloud. “I beg your pardon,” he added. “If

you had told me that this was a legal cross-examination--”

“Not precisely that, Mr. Robson. I should have thought that you would

appreciate its purport,” returned the other in a tone of grave rebuke.

“I do.” There was a grim set to the other’s lips. “I know Aunt Edie well

enough to appreciate her practical jokes.”

“Really, Mr. Robson! I am bound to protest against the assumption that

our late client--”

“All right! All right! I withdraw it. Fire ahead.”

Mr. Arthur Weston looked delicately but impressively pained. “You felt

no affection or esteem for the deceased?” he inquired through pursed

lips.

“I liked the old lady, in a way,” confessed Jeremy reminiscently. “She

had such a cheery spice of the devil in her. And her tongue! And her

pen! Oh, Lord! What an editorial writer she’d have made, if she could

have kept out of jail.”

“I need hardly tell you, Mr. Robson, that she gravely disapproved of

your journalistic predilections.”

“Nobody need tell me after she got through. Nobody need tell anybody

anything that my Great-Aunt Greer had told ’em first.”

“In order that the record may be clear, let me put this to you. It is

admitted that you disapprove of symbolical mourning; that you do not

practice it. If you did practice it, would you have worn mourning for

the deceased Miss Greer?”

“If the dog had n’t stopped to scratch the flea would he have caught the

rabbit?” retorted the irreverent Mr. Robson.

“I must insist upon a reply.”

“No; I certainly shouldn’t. Why should I? I’m not grieving over Aunt

Edie’s death. She’s no real loss to me. Nor gain, either, now,” he added

with a rueful grin. “I’m not going to pretend. So, you see, there’s not

even a mitigating circumstance.”

“Mitigating circ--”

“Good legal phrase, is n’t it? Oh, I understand your errand perfectly.

Aunt Edie wrote me that there was a ‘condition’ to the legacy that I

would n’t fulfill. If you’d come out here and found me all swathed up in

black like a mummy, and with a funereal gulp in my voice when I spoke

of my dear old Auntie, and the general manners of an undertaker right

on the job, I expect it might have been worth twenty or twenty-five

thousand dollars to me. Even a mourning band on my coat and a few

appropriate sighs in the right place might have got me five or ten

thousand. Maybe if I’d stopped to figure it out, I’d have dressed the

part. A fellow will do a good deal for money. Then again, maybe I would

n’t.” The memory of Marcia’s frank and lustrous eyes checked him. Could

he have met their challenge, with the black badge of hypocrisy on him?

“No! I’m damned if I would!” he declared with profound sincerity. “So

there you have it. I know where I get off, and I don’t much care, to

tell the truth. I lose.”

The overweighted legal victim of responsibilities almost too heavy to be

borne, slowly and accurately gathered up his hat, his gloves, his cane,

his portfolio, and his eye-glasses in the absorbed manner of one taking

an inventory. He bowed a solemn and professional farewell to Mr. Robson.

At the door he paused. A gleam as of some faint, inward flickering of

the eternal human which must at times assert itself even through the

cerements of legal procedure, appeared upon his pink and careworn

features.

“No,” he pronounced profoundly. “You win.”

CHAPTER IX

WHAT ’s the matter with you, Robson?”

Young Jeremy Robson turned a lack-luster eye upon Wackley, his managing

editor. “Nothing,” he said listlessly.

“You’re not looking well.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said the reporter, dully wishing his solicitous

superior at the devil.

“Want a few days off to go fishin’?”

“No, thanks.”

“What do you want?” inquired Wackley, dreading to hear that a raise

of pay was the requisite. Cheered by the valuable reporter’s negative

declaration of content with his lot as it was, the editor continued: “A

sick owl is a merry wag to what you’ve been for the last ten days. All

the ginger has gone out of your stuff. Can’t you dig us up something

more as good as your Eli Wade story?”

In that moment Jeremy Robson savored the sensations of the

chicken-killing puppy when, awaking from blessedly forgetful reverie, it

finds the dismal and penal relic of its crime still fast about its neck.

“Look here,” pursued Wackley. “This is n’t going to do. You quit for the

day, and go home. To-morrow there’s going to be doings in the Senate.

Martin Embree is going to spring something. You cover it. We’ll want a

good story, if the stuff comes through. Beat it for home, now!”

Home? Young Jeremy Robson felt a loathly distaste for his quiet room up

off the campus. But so he felt a loathly distaste for the whole of that

hollow and lifeless shell about him, which had so lately been the world

of his crowded, vigorous interests. Man delighted him not; no, nor

woman, either; not even the pride of his work and his satisfaction in

having become something of a figure, though in a minor degree, locally.

He hungered, with the intensity of a self-willed and rather lonely

nature, for the sight and sound and essence of Marcia Ames who was some

weeks and Heaven only knew how many miles away from him. Young Jeremy

Robson had suffered as severe a hurt as youth can suffer and still

continue to be youth.

He wandered idly up the Nicklin Avenue hill and turned into the shaded

sweetness of Montgomery Street. Miss Letitia Pritchard was at her

hedge-row, cutting roses. She was a placid and vigorous mite of a woman,

unfaded at fifty, sweet and hardy and fresh-hued and rugged like a late,

frost-resisting apple.

“How hot and tired you look!” was her greeting across the barrier

of bloom and fragrance. “Come in and I’ll give you some iced

ginger-and-lemon.” She led the way to a dwarfish table in a fairy grotto

of rocks and climbing flowers. “Are you never coming to see me any

more?”

“I didn’t know you’d care to have me,” he replied, exactly like a

forlorn small boy.

“Your rival, Buddy Higman, comes every day. Though that’s partly

business. But he always starts in by asking, ‘Heard from Her, again,

Miss Letty?’”

Her visitor gave her a grateful look. “What do you hear, Miss

Pritchard?”

“My young and dangerous cousin is dashing about New York at a great

rate,” she informed him, “enjoying life to the utmost.”

“Then she has n’t sailed yet.”

“She sails in a fortnight.”

“Does she say anything about coming back?”

The rosy spinster shook her head. “Not a word. But then, Marcia does n’t

say things. She does ’em.”

“Do you think she will come back--some time?”

“Probably not. I think she will--well, do what is best for her. Without

being at all a selfish person, Marcia has a singular instinct for doing

what is best for herself. In the real sense, I mean.”

Undoubtedly! reflected young Mr. Jeremy Robson. She had done the best

thing for herself in judging him and finding him lacking. Acceptance of

which fact gave to his face an expression which caused Miss Pritchard

to look the other way. Presently she went to a shelf in the nook and

brought out an envelope which she placed in her caller’s hand.

“Are n’t they good!” said she.

He smoothed out the curving paper, and Marcia’s own face smiled forth

its quaint and inscrutable witchery at him.

“I took it the day before she went away. There’s one to spare,” she

suggested.

“Do you think she’d want me to have it?” he asked, his hungry gaze set

upon the little print.

“You’re a nice boy,” said Miss Letitia Pritchard. (“And all the nicer,”

she thought to herself, “for being so much a boy.”) “Yes; she’d be glad

to have you have it, I think.”

“She did n’t say so?”

Sympathy for the eagerness of his tone softened the old maid’s smile.

“No. She did n’t say so. She did n’t say anything about you, except that

you’d come to see me. For a time I thought her prophecy was wrong.”

“I’d like to come again.”

“As often as you like,” she said kindly. “You’re one of three people

she talked to me about, the night before she left. The others were

Buddy--she is going to help him get an education when the time

comes--and Eli Wade.” From day to day Jeremy had postponed the dreaded

confessional visit to the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “You’ve reminded me of an

errand, Miss Pritchard,” he said.

Bidding her good-bye, he went direct to the Infirmary. The old

practitioner sat hunched over a pair of white buckskins. He lifted a

mild, but questioning face to Jeremy.

“Come in, Mr. Robson,” said he. “It’s quite some time sence you was

here.”

“I was ashamed to come,” blurted Jeremy..

“Shucks! Don’t say that. You can’t be responsible for what they order

you to write. That’s a reporter’s job.”

“Who says so?”

“Nick Milliken. He says any reporter ’d have to do the same.”

This was a bitter flavoring to the dose. “That is n’t so,” replied

Jeremy quietly. “I need n’t have written it; not that way. I need n’t

have written it at all.”

The Boot & Shoe Surgeon set down the subject upon which he was

operating. “I don’t understand,” he said, puzzled and despondent. “Did

you want to do it?”

“That is n’t the question. I did n’t have to do it. If necessary I could

have resigned.”

The old man’s face cleared up. “Quit your job? That’d ’a’ been

foolish. There was n’t any call for you to do that.”

“Anyhow I’m mighty sorry I ever touched the story. And if I’d known what

it was going to do to you”--The old man flinched involuntarily at this

reference to the dead glories of his School Board incumbency--“I’d never

have touched it in the world.”

“Sure you would! You’d do it again. To-morrow if the orders came.”

Jem whirled to meet the malevolent smile of Nicholas Milliken, the

Socialist, standing in the doorway.

“I told you not to blame this young feller,” the newcomer bade Eli Wade.

“He can’t help it. He’s only a louse-souled ratchet in the machinery of

the capitalistic press.” Obviously much pleased with this rich metaphor,

Mr. Milliken entered and seated himself.

“Well, I knew he wouldn’t do it to me a-purpose,” said Eli Wade.

Jeremy Robson felt sick; too sick even to be incensed at Milliken who

proceeded:

“Did n’t even know the little game they were playing, did you,

young feller? Well, you see, Eli, here, he’s a radical as far as his

intelligence will carry him. That’s my influence on him. The bosses

don’t want radicals on the School Board. They don’t want ’em anywhere.

Anyhow the Schools belong to the Germans: that’s their specialty. So,

Eli being against the cultural-extension-of-German plan, they stir up

the Germans against him, and then sick the newspapers onto him, and when

they sick, _you_ do the yapping. That’s all there is to _that_. Except

that Smiling Mart, the damned hypocrite, steps up and eases Eli out

to help put in another German and clinch his hold on a few more German

votes. Not that it ain’t all right, at that; if they’ll put in a good

radical. The cultural extension’s good enough, like anything else

that’ll help people _think_. Oh, these fools! They can’t see education

is what’s going to dish ’em all and bring on the Social Revolution.”

“Don’t you talk against Martin Embree, Nick,” admonished the proprietor.

“There ain’t a straighter set pair o’ feet in the State of Centralia.”

“All right. Then I’m a goat; look at my hoofs!” grinned the Socialist.

“But be patient with our helpless young hired-man writer here.”

Jeremy liked Milliken’s contemptuous excusals less than Wade’s blame,

and said so.

“Oh, you ain’t reached the bottom of your ditch yet,” jeered the

Socialist. “How’s the editorial end? Still writing ’em?”

“Yes,” said Jeremy shortly.

“Pot of ink; pot o’ glue; pot o’ soft soap and a pair of blinders;

there’s your editorial-writer’s outfit. Done any slush-bucketing for

Montrose Clark yet?”

“No.”

“Say it as though you did n’t expect to. But you will. Oh, yes; you’ll

come to it.”

“Let him be, Nick,” said the gentle old philosopher of foot-garb.

“Did he let you be? Let him listen. One day old Judge Slippery Selden

Dana will come puttering into The Record office--”

“On the ball of his sole,” put in the Boot & Shoe Surgeon.

“Pussyfooting. _Of_ course. He’ll suggest to Mr. Farley; that some

recognition of Mr. Montrose Clark’s eminent services as a citizen would

be timely. Know what that means? Means that Puffy Clark and the P.-U.

Co. are getting ready to grab another franchise. Does Mr. Farley see

it that way? He does! He remembers a little slice of P.-U. stock in the

strong-box. And if Young Feller, here, is good enough with his pen, he

wins the job of puffery for the puffiest little public-utility-grafting

puff-adder that ever stung a city. And will _he_ see it that way? He

will. He’ll remember his little pay envelope at the end of the week, and

he’ll come through. It’s a grand little system.”

“Nothing wrong with a system that lets a man get from his employees what

he pays for,” defended Jeremy.

“Nothing wrong with your cutting Eli Wade’s throat to order, either.

Eh?”

To this Jeremy found no reply.

“Remember that apology I was going to make on demand? Do I hear any

demand? I guess the apology’s the other way around.”

“I’ve made it. Not to you, though. I’m going on. Eli! Once more I’m

sorry and I’m ashamed.”

“Until next time,” added the irrepressible malice of the white-haired

Socialist.

Not trusting himself to reply, the reporter walked out. Within a few

strides Milliken was at his side.

“He’s bad hurt, the old boy,” he confided in a wholly altered and wholly

sincere tone.

“I’m sorry--”

‘“Oh, your story is only part of it. Clever! Vur-ree clever. But they’d

have got his place on the Board anyway. They needed it.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. Unless,” added the other on reflection, “you could slip

something pleasant about him over some time. That’d please him. He’s

like a child, about print.”

At home Jem took out the picture of Marcia Ames and studied it. Tiny

though it was, it was instinct with her very poise and spiritual

effluence. As so often with herself, he felt the something unsaid behind

the serene self-possession of the face; the something vital for which he

must grope. What was the message, the demand which the face was making

upon him, which she was making upon him through this dear memento?

Ranging back, he recalled in a flash that first impression of her in the

meeting, while she was still so completely unknown that he had mistaken

even the fundamental matter of sex; the impression of an untouched,

untainted valorousness. Again he saw it, reflected from the tiny

delicacy of the picture. Plain enough now what she demanded of him.

It was courage.

CHAPTER X

THE Senate proceedings did not open until ten o’clock. Meantime

Montrose Clark, President of the Fenchester Public Utilities

Corporation, and in some part godling of local affairs, had telephoned

his commands to The Record that a representative be sent to his office

that morning to take a statement for the paper. Jeremy, incautiously

dropping in at the office early, got the job to do before going to

the Capitol. He was admitted to an outer office by the hand-perfected

private secretary, cross-questioned briefly, and passed in to the

Presence.

Mr. Montrose Clark was telephoning. He was revealed to Jeremy’s

inquiring eye as a plump, glossy, red-faced little man with a fussily

assured manner, an autocratic voice and a keen and greedy eye. Few

indeed were the local pies of promise or flavor in which Mr. Clark did

not have a pudgy and profit-taking finger; and his bearing suggested the

man comfortably sure of taking care of himself. He snapped “G’-bye” into

the telephone and turned to Jeremy.

“You’re the rippawtah from The Record?”

The accent of the word stirred Jeremy’s bile. He did not know that it

was merely a sub-conscious stock trick of Mr. Clark’s; that there were

certain words, such as “rippawtah,” “culchah,” “legislaychuh,” and the

like, whereby he asserted his superiority of intellectual status,

reverting to the comfortable speech of the Middle West for the

communication of other thoughts.

“I’m from The Record,” he said.

“Take this.” The public-utilitarian began to dictate....

“Got that? Be sure to be accurate. This is important.” To the reporter

it seemed neither important nor interesting. It was a statement

concerning a projected change, petty, administrative, and technical,

in the conduct of the trolley system. Had it been of the most vital

significance, the “rippawtah” would still have grilled at the impersonal

arrogance of the other’s attitude.

“Got that?” repeated Mr. Clark, after another passage. “Read it over.”

Jeremy laid down his pencil. “Don’t you think you’d better send for one

of your stenographers?”

“What for?” demanded the other. “A rippawtah ought to be able to take

dictation, if he’s competent.”

“A ‘rippawtah,’ as you call him, is accustomed to a certain degree of

courtesy.”

Mr. Montrose Clark pressed a button and his hand-perfected private

secretary popped in.

“Garson! Call The Record. Tell Farley to instruct his rippawtah to

follow directions and not be insolent.”

Red to his cheek-bones, Jeremy tore up the sheet of paper on which he

had been writing, dropped the pieces upon the immaculate rug of the

outraged Mr. Montrose Clark, and marched out. Straight to The Record

office he went and sought Wackley.

“You can have my job. I’m through.”

“What’s the matter?” asked the astonished and alarmed managing editor.

Jeremy told him. Wackley laughed. He had no intention of losing so

valuable a man as Robson.

“Between us, Montrose Clark is an ass,” he said. “Don’t let him bother

you. We’ll keep you away from his jobs after this. Anyway, we’re going

to work you into editorials and specials more, from now on. Trot along

now to the Capitol, and keep your eye on Mart Embree.” Anticipation was

in the air of the Senate Chamber when Jeremy arrived. Something

special was expected from Senator Embree. As always, when he was on the

programme, the galleries were full. There was reason and precedent for

this, for the two local newspapers were wont to report the leader of

the Northern Tier in a cautious, not to say niggardly manner. People

who wished to savor the full acidity of the young radical’s utterances,

would best get seats for themselves, or be dependent upon more provident

friends for word-of-mouth synopsis of the proceedings, since the

unfortunate instance of the famous “Piracy and the P.-U.” speech on

the Special Condemnation Bill, in which Senator Embree had held up that

civic godling, Mr. Montrose Clark, to the scorn and reprehension of

the impious rabble, and the local press had published the whole matter.

Politicians had confidently declared that the speech would terminate the

public life of Smiling Mart, who, by the way, had smiled only twice in

the whole course of his effort, once at the beginning and again at the

end. Montrose Clark, they said, would be too strong for him. It did not

so appear. When the tumult and the shouting had died and the captains

of industry and the kings of local politics had departed and laid their

plans for the elimination of the upstart, it transpired that the upstart

had by that one speech crystallized a somewhat indefinite policy of

progressive radicalism into a compaign for the rescue of the State from

the control of the financial and public utility magnates who had quietly

taken it over from an older and far more corrupt purely political

management. The man in the street rallied to Martin Embree, as well

where the street was a country town thoroughfare as where it was a

city’s artery of trade, and the farmers of the north followed almost

in a body and without much respect to party. These were unassimilated

Americans; Scandinavians, a few Dutch and Italians, but mostly

Germans. Martin Embree had the unbounded confidence of these elements,

particularly the Germans. He had cultivated it assiduously, and by

legitimate political methods. In and out of season he impressed them

with their responsibility for the cleansing of politics, and for reform.

Now, to your German-American, uplifted in the conviction of racial

righteousness, reform is a word sanctified for his own uses. Reform

means compelling other people to think as he thinks. Therefore he

solemnly adopts it. Reform, to these Northern Tier farmers, meant Martin

Embree. By this support alone, if he had enjoyed no other, he was too

strong for the powers that were completely to dislodge. He was clean,

honest, earnest, fervent, laborious, and the possessor of a direct

and winning address. Too late, the “old gang” perceived that he had

developed from a “cheap spellbinder” into a “dangerous demagogue”; and

largely because they had so ill-advisedly permitted such part of the

press as they controlled, to disseminate that telling speech of his. At

least, they would n’t make that mistake again! Martin Embree was now too

considerable a figure to be ignored in print. But no other man in the

public life of Centralia was so rigorously “edited.”

To-day, Jeremy Robson foresaw, his own job would be one of reporting

orally, rather than writing. This acting as political lookout he quite

enjoyed; it gave him a flattering sense of being on the inside of

things. Then, too, there was opportunity for finesse. If the speaker of

the day got upon slippery ground, Jeremy would have his chance to trip

him up editorially, perhaps. He knew that Embree would not resent this

in him. It was part of the game, in which they were, for the present,

opponents. The Senator’s good-humor and broad-minded acceptance of the

matter was one of the qualities which Jeremy most ardently admired in

him. And politically he was so right and decent and clear of vision!

What would not Jeremy have given for a chance as political expert on a

paper supporting Embree’s main policies, a progressive and independent

paper such as the Bellair Journal, for example! Perhaps that would come

in time; already The Journal had offered him a reporter’s job. Meanwhile

he must, in fairness, be loyal to his employers. Embree himself would

admit that. Any one would admit it, except a hare-brained Socialist like

Milliken. Jeremy clung to that justification of loyalty.

Routine business was still in progress on the floor when Galpin of The

Guardian came in and seated himself next to Jeremy. There was still a

patch over his left eye. His broad and bony face wore, an expression of

concerned expectation. .

“What’s Embree after this time?” Jeremy whispered to him.

“Us,” said Galpin.

“Editorial ‘we’? The Guardian? How?”

“Don’t know. Can’t pick up much. Martin don’t ever say much beforehand.

Pulls his gun and shoots.”

“And Lord help the bull’s-eye!”

“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “I asked him this morning what’s what, and all

he said was; ‘Better get ready to duck in the Press Gallery,’ with

that smile of his that may mean fun and may mean murder. Look! There’s

Slippery Selden Dana on the floor.”

“That means the P.-U. is in it.”

“Not necessarily. But it means something out of the ordinary. He is n’t

spending Montrose Clark’s time on any picayune stuff.”

“You can’t blame Embree if he goes after the newspapers,” said The

Record reflectively.

“Fool trick, though. They always get in the last wallop.”

“Look what a raw deal he gets, here in Fenchester. The best he gets from

The Record is silent contempt, and The Guardian--well, I don’t know why

he has n’t sued The Guardian for libel long ago.”

“What’d be the use?”

“You mean The Guardian is right in practically saying he’s a crook?”

“No. I guess he’s the nearest decent thing we’ve got in this rotten

mess of politics,” said Galpin with the experienced political reporter’s

cynical view of public men, “unless it’s Magnus Laurens.”

“Then why won’t they give him a fair shake? I don’t mind their going

after him editorially. That’s opinion. But to cut him out of the news,

that gets my goat a little.”

“Ay-ah? Well, you see, he’s gumming our game.”

“What ga--”

“The whole, dam’, slick, polite graft that makes the machine run so

smooth and nice and turns out the pretty little dividends for the banks

and the railroads and the big companies generally. Haven’t you seen into

that millstone yet?”

“You talk as if you were really on Embree’s side.”

“Ay-ah. Why not?”

“But The Guard--”

“I’m a hired man,” said Galpin impassively.

“If you had a paper of your own--”

“Be a hired man just the same.”

“Who could boss you then?” asked Jeremy in surprise. “Same bunch that

bosses The Record and The Guardian.”

“Could n’t a paper be run independent of them?”

“Never has been in this town.”

“But could n’t it?” persisted the other. “Would n’t it be fun to work on

a paper like that!”

“Gee!” murmured Galpin. They were like two urchins savoring a golden and

imaginative treat.

“Mr. President.”

The resonant tones of Martin Embree’s rich and effortless voice roused

the reporters from their boyish vision. He stood tall, handsome, easy,

confident, but his usually sunny face was grave, and he held in his hand

a document, contrary to his custom. Before he had spoken five minutes to

the hushed attention of floor and galleries, it became evident that his

talk was centering and converging upon that document. His subject was

the “cheese check” scandal which had roused the dairy farmers of his

region to fury. He traced the steps whereby the commission men’s combine

had sought legislation which would have rendered the producer almost

helpless in their hands, touched upon alleged bribery in the lower

House, referred to the part which two of the Fenchester banking

institutions had played (“That’s why Dana was here; Montrose Clark’s in

the banking game on the side,” whispered Galpin), and continued:

“For my own conscientious and repeated attempts to block this nefarious

deal, I have been consistently derided as a silly reformer by one of

the local newspapers, and denounced by the other in terms which, were

circumstances otherwise, I should reply to by a suit for criminal libel.

I am enabled to deal with The Fenchester Guardian, in a more effective,

swifter, and more relevant manner. Will the clerk of the Senate kindly

read this letter, which fell into my hands by a happy accident, and the

authenticity of which will not be denied by its author?”

The clerk of the Senate received the document with a look of interest

unusual in his stolid official bearing. He began to read:

“Editor’s Office of The Fenchester Evening Guardian: Undated. My dear

Mr. Dorlon:--”

“The date is established as of last month by the envelope,” said Senator

Embree.

Profiting by the interruption, the clerk ran his eye swiftly through the

one-page letter; but, instead of resuming his reading, left his place

and carried it to the presiding officer. Their heads bent over it close

together. A whisper passed between them. Its sibilance, though not its

purport, could be heard through the silenced chamber. The clerk of the

Senate turned away, not toward his desk, but toward the curtained exit.

“Mr. Clerk!” Martin Embree’s voice was not raised by the iota of a tone;

yet it stopped the man in his tracks. “Not one step out of my sight with

that document.”

“The Senator will come to order. The Senator will address himself to the

chair,” rebuked the President.

Embree’s arm rose, rigid as iron, until his stiffened hand pointed with

all the menace of a weapon straight into the face of the discomposed

presiding officer.

“Mr. President, I hold you responsible for the safety and integrity of

that document. I ask you to direct the clerk to read it.”

“Read,” said the President after a moment of hesitation.

_“‘My dear Mr. Dorlon,’” repeated the clerk: “‘I have yours of the 19th

with directions for claiming the last payment from the Trust Co. Glad

you approve the paper’s course and are satisfied with what we have done

on the Cheese Commission Bill. Locker and Mayne are O.K. I turned over

their balance to them. We can whip Smith into line; Cary, Sellers, and

Gunderson, too, in time. In the Senate we owe a great deal to’” (the

clerk’s voice faltered) “‘Bellows’” (the clerk’s name was Bellows).

“‘Better look after him. Let me know when you come to the Capitol.

“‘Yours very truly, (Signed) A. M. Wymett.’”_

Dead silence followed, in which the footsteps of the messenger returning

the document to Senator Embree, sounded loud and hollow. Then a voice

(unidentified) pronounced from the gallery in accents of intensest

conviction: “Well, I _am_ damned!” Which inspired another voice (also

unidentified) to adjure solemnly, “Burn this letter.” The Senate found

relief in nervous, shrill, tittering laughter. “Will the papers print

_that?_” shouted somebody, and the presiding officer recovering,

hammered vehemently for order.

“Gentlemen,” concluded Martin Embree, the damnatory letter raised to the

level of his head, “I leave to this honorable body the determination

as between the Honorable A. M. Wymett, editor and proprietor of The

Fenchester Guardian, and myself.”

He sat down.

Jeremy turned to his fellow reporter, with questioning eyes.

“Knock-out,” said Galpin.

“Criminal charge, is n’t it?”

“Guess so. Anyhow, it’s good-bye Guardian. So far as Wymett’s concerned,

anyway. The crooked hound!”

“Did n’t you know he was doing their dirty work?”

“I knew he took orders. I didn’t know he took money. We all take orders.

You’ll take orders when you suppress this story.”

“Can it be suppressed?”

“It’s got to be. Honor of the profession and all that sort of thing.

Let’s get out. I want some air.”

Outside they walked along for a block, before either spoke. Jeremy said:

“Andy, how’s this going to affect you?”

“Don’t know. Shut up about it, can’t you! Talk about something else.”

“All right,” agreed the other cheerfully. “I’ll talk about myself. I’ve

got a chance to make a change. What do you think of editorial writing?”

“Nice, soft job. If you can do it. I could n’t.”

“I can.”

“Go to it, then. Only I would n’t stick to it.”

“Why not?”

Galpin rubbed his shaggy head. “Oh, I dunno. Too much preaching of the

other fellow’s doctrine, I guess.”

Jeremy’s mind reverted to Milliken’s view and he wondered how nearly the

two agreed. Certainly between preaching and the profession to which

the Socialist had bitterly likened editorializing, yawned the widest of

gulfs. He stated Milliken’s characterization.

“Rough stuff,” commented Galpin. “I guess there’s something in it,

though. Ay-ah. I get his point.”

“Then you would n’t take the job?”

“You might try it on for a while. But as a permanency--well, it seems to

me a fellow that’s settled down to write editorials for another man all

his life has sort of given up.”

“Given up? What?”

“Everything. He’s licked. Ay-ah. He’s a beaten man. He’s under contract

to think another man’s thoughts and make other folks think ’em if he

can.”

“Are n’t we doing that as reporters?”

“Not so much. Facts ain’t thoughts. You can report and keep your mind

independent. That’s why I climb off the desk whenever I can, like

to-day. Whew! I came near having Mr. Wymett go along with me. He was

held up at the last minute.”

Galpin turned into his office. Jeremy went to The Record to report to

Wackley and was turned over to Mr. Farley.

“Nothing about The Guardian can be published, of course,” prescribed

that diplomat, who had already been in communication with the local

leaders. “Give us half a column of the rest. And go light. It’s ticklish

ground.”

After finishing, Jeremy went out for a long and thoughtful walk. On

his return home he found a letter with the letterhead of Messrs. Hunt

& Hunt, Attorneys, of Philadelphia. The firm begged to inform him

that, with due allowance for taxes and fees, he was heir, under his

great-aunt’s will, to the sum of $86,730.18.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER listening to Andrew Galpin’s verbal report upon Senator Martin

Embree’s painful and convincing characterization of The Guardian’s

editorial page as for sale to the highest bidder, backed up by

discouraging details regarding himself, A. M. Wymett retired to his

house to commune with a bottle and a time-table of the trains to Canada.

As a man’s house is his castle and as castles are not connected with a

troublous and uncharitable world by wires of communication, he further

fortified his position by cutting off the telephone. He then profoundly

considered his prospects and as profoundly misliked them.

As befitted the owner of a pliable daily, Mr. Wymett was thoroughly

conversant with the law bearing upon publications. It seemed

unpleasantly probable to him that his ill-fated letter laid him open to

indictment on any one of three counts. That smiling Mart Embree would

push for criminal action, he had little doubt. The Guardian unhappily

had nothing on the Senator; he could n’t be blackmailed. If the

financial and political powers in control would stand by, The Guardian

could weather the storm, albeit severely battered in reputation. But

would they? Could they afford to in view of the definite nature of the

exposure? Mr. Wymett supped gloomily and alone with this question and

afterward took it into his study with him for the evening’s speculation.

His long, grave, immobile, ascetic face grew longer, graver, more

immobile, and more ascetic as the facts in their bearing upon him massed

a formidable array of cons against a scraggly and wavering handful of

pros.

Upon him thus absorbed, and steadily absorbing (for the bottle was still

his counselor), intruded young Robson of The Record.

“Nothing to say for publication,” snapped Wymett, professionally shocked

at the idea of his rival’s making capital of his misfortunes.

“We’re not printing anything,” pleasantly replied his visitor.

“What do you want, then?”

“Will you sell The Guardian?”

“To whom?”

“To me.”

Mr. Wymett leaned back from his desk and studied his caller from beneath

heavy eyelids. His posture lent to his face a furtively benevolent look

as of one meditating the performance of a good deed on the sly. Such was

not his precise intent, as regarded young Robson. He didn’t trust young

Robson. He did n’t trust The Record. For that matter he was not in a

mood to trust anybody or anything in a calumnious world. He opened

a small cabinet at his elbow which he had hastily closed upon young

Robson’s entrance.

“May I offer you a drink?” he said.

“No; thank you.”

“Good! Nothing mixes so badly with printer’s ink,” approved the older

man patronizingly. “I seldom touch it, otherwise than as a digestant.”

He poured himself a liberal allowance and set the glass on his desk.

“Whom do you represent?”

“Myself.”

Mr. Wymett smiled tolerantly. “Of course. But whose capital?”

“My own.”

“A secret deal, eh? What reason have you to suppose that the paper is

for sale?”

“I was in the Senate.”

Thus unpleasantly recalled to his thorny situation, Mr. Wymett gulped

down his whiskey and hastily poured another.

“A bare-faced forgery,” he asserted with an effect of judicial severity;

“as will be proved at the proper time.”

“Let us assume it to be, for the sake of courtesy. It got a quick

endorsement,” replied young Robson smoothly.

Mr. Wymett hastily set down the re-filled glass which he was

voluptuously raising, and rather wished that he had n’t taken that other

one. Young Robson was not, perhaps, as young as his years.

“Endorsement?” he inquired.

“Locker and Mayne have skipped out. The forgery impressed them to that

extent.”

“Yellow,” commented the severe Mr. Wymett. His hand crept toward the

stimulant which possesses the mystic power of changing timorous yellow

into fighting red--up to a point--and was retracted again before

attaining the goal. The caller’s quick eye noted the movement. “They own

no part of The Guardian,” added its proprietor, “and their action has

nothing to do with the matter of its sale.”

“No,” commented young Robson in a tone disturbingly indeterminate

between confirmation and incredulity.

“I’ve been offered a hundred thousand for the paper,” remarked Mr.

Wymett casually.

“Coal-oil Johnny must have been out this way.”

“My dear young sir,” said Mr. Wymett in a tone intended to be crushing;

“I am talking business. May I trouble you to do the same?”

“Then The Guardian _is_ for sale.”

“Everything in this world is for sale, at its price,” returned the

editor-owner, thereby unconsciously voicing his philosophy of life.

“I assume that the price of The Guardian has not been increased by the

events of to-day.”

“Assume nothing of the sort.”

Young Mr. Robson leaned forward over the desk. “Shall I talk plain

talk?”

“If you please.”

“There’ll be an indictment if you stay here.”

“There will. For forgery. Against the author of that faked letter.”

“Against you. Nothing can stop it.”

“Did Embree promise you that?”

“There’s no question of promise. I don’t even get your idea.”

“Indeed! Suppose you give me credit for a gleam of intelligence. Nothing

more is required to see your game. Yours and Embree’s. He wants to

get his hands on a paper here. He fakes up this attack on me and The

Guardian to bulldoze me into selling the paper. You are his tool. The

pair of you think you can run me off my own property with an unloaded

gun. Not A. M. Wymett!”

“Very ingenious. But Senator Embree does n’t happen to enter into this

in any way, shape, or manner.”

“Then who is backing you? Is it Phipps and the brewery crowd? Or the

banking trust? I don’t suppose you’ve saved the money out of your

twenty-five a week from The Record.”

“That’s beside the question. The money is there. Seventy thousand

dollars flat.”

Into Mr. Wymett’s parched-looking eyes shot a swift gleam, only to be

as swiftly veiled. He lifted and slowly drank the liquor before him. He

shook his head.

“Not to be considered. Absurd.”

“It is what I figure The Guardian to be worth; to have been worth up to

two-fifteen this afternoon.”

“It is worth just as much now as it was yesterday.”

“Seventy thousand dollars,” pursued young Robson as if the other had not

spoken. “I’d like your answer.”

“Indeed! And when would you like it?”

The visitor glanced at the clock.

“Say, an hour.”

“Come, now! You are n’t so innocent of business as to suppose that deals

of this importance are put through on any such hair-trigger basis.”

“Not ordinarily. This is rather special, is n’t it?” insinuated the

other.

“Frankly, I don’t like your attitude, Mr. Robson.”

“Consider your own.” Jeremy’s eyes hardened. “You’re fiddling and

faddling within a step of the penitentiary. They’ll get you if you try

to hang to The Guardian. Public sentiment will demand it. Do you know

that the Bellair papers are carrying the story?”

“Damn ’em!” said Mr. Wymett and visited the decanter again.

“So, you see how far it’s gone. Now, if it is known that you’re out of

the paper, they’ll let up on you, won’t they? That looks to me like the

politics of it.”

“Probably,” agreed Mr. Wymett.

“Well, what do you say?”

“Let me talk to my lawyer.”

The Honorable Selden Dana was summoned, and came after a short delay,

in the course of which Mr. Wymett had two more whiskies to his own good

luck, for the price offered was better than he could have reasonably

hoped. On Judge Dana’s arrival he and Mr. Wymett retired for a

conference. It was brief. Three words comprised the lawyer’s advice:

“Sell and git!”

“You’ve bought, Mr. Robson,” he said, returning with his client for a

drink, and departed thoughtfully, leaving the old and the new owner of

The Guardian with duly signed preliminary agreements in their pockets.

Jeremy was to take over control the first of the succeeding month.

“So you won’t say where the money comes from?” said the now relaxed and

smiling Mr. Wymett.

“For publication?”

“Oh, no. To satisfy personal curiosity.”

“For that I would n’t. Public curiosity, though; that’s different. I

suppose people will be interested to know who’s back of the paper.”

“Certainly.”

“Then I’ll look to you to tell them. In to-morrow’s Guardian. These are

the facts, which you can verify by wire if you wish.” And he related to

the surprised Mr. Wymett the main circumstances of the Greer will. “When

that is published,” he concluded, “people will understand that it’s

my own money, that The Guardian is my own paper, and that there are no

strings on it or me.”

Mr. Wymett had another drink--“just one more”--to the success of The

Guardian under its new management, and became expansive for once in his

cautious life.

“You’ve bought into a sporting proposition, young man.” The retiring

editor rested his lined and puckered face on his hand, and regarded his

vis-à-vis thoughtfully. “A sporting proposition. Oh, God; I’m glad to be

out of it--and sorry! It’s a hell of a life, and I ‘ve loved it. But in

the end it gets you. Like a drug.”

He sat staring in a brief silence at the young, sanguine, keen face

before him; a sad, humorous-eyed, ageing, slovenly, dishonest, tolerant

philosopher.

“You’re young,” he broke forth. “Young enough, probably, to believe that

you can run a newspaper and still be--and still keep your ideals. Oh, I

had ’em, when I started in, just as you’ve got ’em. Of course you’ve

got ’em! They go with youth. Perhaps they’d stay with youth if youth

would stay with us. But you grow old so damnably fast in this game. Look

at me! Or perhaps you’d better _not_ look at me. You might see yourself

as you’ll be at my age.”

“Not me,” returned Jeremy Robson with unflattering conviction.

“Not? Well, perhaps not. I ‘m an old babbler. So you want Fenchester to

know that it’s your own money that’s behind the paper?”

“Yes; so they’ll understand that it’s a strictly one-man proposition.”

“And you think it’s going to be. Oh, well; for a little while, maybe.

Then--” His voice was as that of one who regretfully deprives a child of

a sweetmeat--“you’ll forego that happy and infantile dream. You’re

not going to run your newspaper just because you’ve bought it. The

politicians are going to run it for you. The banks are going to run it

for you. The railroads and trolley lines and water-power companies

and public-utility people are going to run it for you. And always the

advertisers--the advertisers--the advertisers. You ’re going to be

just a little, careful, polite Recording Secretary for them all. You ’ll

print what they tell you to and you ’ll kill what they forbid you

to print. Otherwise you can’t live. Don’t I know! I’ve tried it--both

ways.”

He dreamed with somnolent eyes back over the happy, troubled,

iniquitous, exciting years of The Guardian. “And so you think you’ll

change all that! Not much to be left of the old Guardian, eh? Perhaps

not even his figurehead, blowing his trumpet over the paper’s title. I

hope you’ll leave that, though. It’s been there a long time. Fifty-odd

years. Almost as long as I’ve lived. For old times’ sake I’d like to

see him stay, the old Guardian. We newspaper men are all sentimentalists

and conservatives at heart.”

“Not me,” denied Jeremy. “Not the conservative part, anyway. But I ‘ll

leave The Guardian his trumpet.”

“That trumpet! I was going to rock the walls of Jericho with it! They

still stand; you may have noticed that. There’s a lot of solidity

about our modern Jericho. As for us poor Joshuas of the newspapers, our

trumpet is n’t a trumpet any more. It’s the horn of a talking-machine.

We’re just damned phonographs playing the records that bigger men thrust

into our mechanical insides. Am I boring you?”

“Go on,” said Jeremy Robson. “I took a course in journalism at college.

There was nothing in it like this.”

“There would n’t be. _I’d_ like to lecture to ’em on the Voice of

the Press. The Voice from the Horn! Nickel-in-the-slot and you get your

tune. The politician drops his coin in and gets his favorite selection,

in consideration of a job on a board. The city authorities drop their

coin in--that’s the official printing--and you sing their little song.

The railroads drop in a few favors, passes and the like, and the horn

grinds out their pet record. And always the advertiser, big, small, and

medium; he owns your paper, news and editorials, and you’ll do as he

says or--where do you get off!

“And then there’s the silencers,” continued the remorseless lecturer.

“Don’t forget the silencers. The Dutch and the Swedes and the Norwegians

and the Irish, all with tender toes. The Jews and the Methodists and the

Catholics and the Lutherans, all touchy as wasps. You can’t afford to

play any tune they don’t like. And always there’s Deutschtum. Know what

‘Deutschtum’ is? No, you would n’t. Well, it means that German-Americans

are organized for German purposes all through the Middle West, and

nowhere more strongly than in this State. When Germany declares war on

Europe, which will be within ten years--yes, I’ve been grinned at before

by people who considered this just a crazy hobby of mine--all our Bunds

and Vereins and Gesellschafts are going to see to it that the United

States either stays out or goes in on the ‘right’ side. Why, they’re

making a Little Germany of us right here in this State and city by slow,

methodical, Teuton education, managed by our school boards which are run

by Germans, trained to it in the public schools--”

“That’s a thing I’d like to tackle,” said Robson thoughtfully.

“Hands off, young David! The Dutch Goliath is too big for your sling.

No, sir! Stand in with them. You’ll find them reasonable and easy enough

to deal with so long as you don’t interfere with their programme. Play

the German tune and they’ll play yours. Study ’em, flatter ’em a

little, and watch ’em. Theirs is the winning game.

“To trail along with the successful element,” continued the cynical

oracle: “That’s the great secret. It’s the only way for a newspaper.

There lies your profit.”

“In other words, selling out to the highest bidder,” translated his

disenchanted listener.

The volunteer professor of journalism took one more drink and gazed with

surprise and reproach at the empty bottle.

“Oh, I don’t say you’ll sell out, all at once. It’s a gradual process.

Step by step, finding a nice soft excuse to plant your foot on each

time, until you hit the bottom. Don’t I know! What you won’t do for

fear, you’ll do for friendship--and then for favor--and then for

preferment.” His voice dropped, and his eyes sought the empty liquor

glass. “And then--for cash.”

The younger man stirred, uneasy under that intimate and betraying

confidence.

“Oh, it’s a rotten game, and Lord! how I hate to be quitting it!”

pursued the philosopher. “How I’d love to be you, just getting really

into it! Perhaps I’d do different. Make a better job of it. Keep to

my ideals. Perhaps not. Too heavy odds.” His eyes lifted again with a

bleary, dreamy wistfulness. “So you’re going to run an honest newspaper

in Fenchester, are you, son?”

The visitor rose. “You bet I am!” he said jubilantly. [_Often in the

vivid years to follow, the young owner of The Guardian had cause

to reflect that the shrewdest professional advice which he had

ever disregarded came from one who had just “stuck” him with an

all-but-ruinous bargain._]

Late as was the interview, he could n’t go to bed without telling Andrew

Galpin. Much depended on that astute youth. Jeremy routed him out of

bed, at his boarding-house.

“Come out and get a rarebit and a stein of beer, Andy.”

“Ay-a-a-ah!” yawned Galpin. “Watsamatter with you? What time is it?”

“Quarter to one.”

“You’re crazy, young fellow.”

“I’m worse than that. I’ve just bought The Guardian.”

“_What!_”

“That’s what.”

“Where’d you get the money?”

“Left to me.”

“How much did you pay?”

“Seventy thousand.”

“Seventy! You fat-wit!”

“What’s the matter with that?” asked Jeremy, crestfallen.

“Twenty thousand nice, fat, round, cool dollars is what’s the matter

with it. Why did n’t you tell me?”

“Did n’t have the time. I caught Wymett when he was scared.”

“He caught you when you were easy,” retorted Galpin in disgust. “How

did you happen to get stuck for seventy?”

Jeremy looked sulky. “I figured it out on a basis of advertising and

circulation.”

“Oh, hell! You poor innocent!” These unpalatable observations he left

his caller to digest while he retired to wash his face. In the act of

lacing up his left boot he remarked: “You could have got it for fifty.

Fifty-five at the outside.”

“It ought to make eight thousand a year.”

“On paper,” was Galpin’s laconic comment. He looked up from his right

boot. “Its advertising rate card is all bunk. Rotten with rebates.”

“Oh!” said Jeremy blankly. “Anyway, it can be made to make money,” he

added, recovering.

“Maybe. How much reserve have you got?”

“Oh, about fifteen thousand.”

“It’ll eat that in the first year,” observed Galpin, slipping into his

suspenders.

A dismayed silence fell between the friends. “Well, come on,” said

Jeremy finally.

“I’m afraid I’ll spoil your appetite.”

“You have n’t improved it,” admitted Jeremy. “So you think I’ve made a

fool of myself.”

“I think you’ve bought a dog, and an old dog.”

“It can be taught new tricks.”

“A yellow dog.”

“It hasn’t always been yellow. It needn’t keep on being.”

“I don’t think you’ll be comfortable in its hide.”

“Andy, I’d counted on you.”

Galpin stopped buttoning his waistcoat and looked up. “For what?”

“To help me make a real newspaper.”

“As how?”

“General manager.”

“Is that why you’re asking me out to beer up, young fellow?”

“Yes.”

Galpin removed his waistcoat and hung it neatly on a chair back. He

then proceeded to unlace his right boot. “What are you doing?” demanded

Jeremy.

“Going back to bed.”

“Not interested?”

“Worse than that. I’m excited.”

“Want time to--”

“Want nothin’!”

“Well, but--”

“No beer for me. No midnight racketings. I go on the water wagon right

here. Also the sleep wagon.” He folded his trousers lengthwise upon his

trunk, and reached for his pajamas. “I advise you the same,” he added.

“We’ve got a job, you and I, training a yellow dog to jump in and fight

for its life.”

“You’re on for the job, then, Andy?” cried Jeremy.

“Boss,” said Andrew Galpin, rolling over into his dishevelled bed,

“you’ve hired a hand.”

END OF PART I

PART II

CHAPTER I

MOTIVES not fully formulated had impelled Jeremy Robson to the purchase

of The Fenchester Guardian. Now that he was face to face with the

multiform problem of what he was to do with his new responsibility,

he sought to determine why he had possessed himself of it, hoping to

discover in that Why a clue to his future course.

Several figures at once stepped to the front of his mind and imperiously

claimed credit for inspiring his action. There was Montrose Clark who

had capped his impersonal insolences by the shibboleth, “rippawtah.”

Nobody was ever going to give Jeremy Robson curt orders as a “rippawtah”

again. (But he had the saving sense to grin at himself for the

triviality of it!) There was Andrew Galpin, who had said of the pleasant

pursuit of editorial writing that the practitioner of it “was licked--a

beaten man,” thus taking all the gloss from that phase. There was

Milliken, crude, coarse, malicious, with his inept but biting

epithets, and his blatant jibes at the necessities of hired-man (or

worse-than-hired-woman) journalism. There was Eli Wade, whom he had

written down to order--though herein Jeremy was still dallying with

self-delusions, since it was the lure of his own facile pen that had

betrayed him there--and to whom he owed a reparation which he could

perhaps now make. There was his old purpose of some day owning a paper;

quite a different paper, however, from the feeble and dubious Guardian.

More potent was the influence, never wholly abated, of that talk with

Senator Martin Embree wherein the shrewd judge of men and agencies had

suggested the power to be exerted for good by a fair-minded, independent

daily. But the real motivating power was Marcia Ames. Withdrawing

herself from him, she had left him a legacy of influence which was, at

the same time, a debt. He owed it to himself to prove to her that he

could be as honorable as she had deemed him dishonorable; as trustworthy

as she had deemed him unfit to be trusted; and he must do this through

this same medium of print whereby he had offended. Something dogged in

him prescribed that he should work out his salvation there on the spot.

She might never return to see it. She might never even know of it. But

it would be her work. By so much, at least, Jeremy would hold her. And

in doing what she would have him do, he would fill that bleak and arid

void, which, lacking hope, can be appeased only by activity.

It was no easy task which Jeremy Robson had set himself, that of making

his new property a vehicle for ideals. He was content that it should not

be easy. He craved hard, exacting, stimulant work. The Guardian offered

it in more generous measure than a better paper could have done. Jeremy

purposed to save The Guardian’s soul. Perhaps he had some underlying

notion that he might save his own, in the process.

That bad name which, given to a dog, is proverbially alleged to bring

down upon him a peculiarly un-canine fate at the hangman’s hands, had

long attached to The Fenchester Guardian. But the paper’s ill-repute was

no man’s gift. It had been justly earned. Once the stiffly high-minded

personal organ of a stilted and honorable old-school statesman, it had

fallen, under A. M. Wymett, to become a mongrel of journalism, a forlorn

and servile whiner, fawning for petty favors, kicked about by the

financial and political interests of the State, and not infrequently

ornamented with a tin can of scandal to its tail in the form of dirty

work performed for some temporary subsidizer in the background. Thanks

to shrewd legal advice and his own editorial adroitness, its guiding

spirit had contrived to escape the law, and, up to the episode of the

disastrously imprudent “cheese-check” letter, open and public contumely.

Further, he had, by dint of sheer ability of a low ethical order but

high technical grade, maintained a fair circulation for his paper.

Its only competitor in the bustling, growing State capital, with its

seventy thousand inhabitants, was The Record. There was no morning

newspaper. Several plans to start one had come to naught, because of

the secret opposition of the local leaders of politics and industry, who

were well content with the two mild and amenable specimens of journalism

already in the field. The Record represented stolid, stodgy, profitable,

and unprogressive respectability in a community now astir with new and

uneasy fermentations. The Guardian had always represented what it was

bidden to represent. What attitude it might adopt under the new control,

was a question not assumed to be troublesome by those whom a change

might conceivably trouble in no small degree. It was comfortably taken

for granted that The Guardian would “be good” when the time and test

came. For the corruptible to put on incorruptibility, in the newspaper

world, is a phenomenon so rare as to be practically negligible.

Soon or late these questions would come to an issue between the new

owner of The Guardian and those who had quietly controlled it for their

own ends. So much Jeremy Robson apprehended. What he had not foreseen

was a more immediate and imperative consideration. He had vaguely

believed that he was taking possession of a semipublic agency of

enlightenment. He found that he had bought a Struggle for Existence.

Quite a number of shrewd and active citizens whose existence had not

hitherto impressed him as important, loomed as figures and probably

antagonists in the struggle. Jeremy found himself in the way of learning

some new and important things about the newspaper business, with his

local advertisers in the pedagogic chair.

Newspapers do not live by the bread of circulation alone, but chiefly by

the strong and sustaining meat of advertising patronage. This important

fact had duly entered into Jeremy Robson’s calculations. On paper he had

figured a clear profit for The Guardian, before purchasing. After

taking over the property he found his estimates borne out by the formal

accounts. But he also found, to his discomfiture, that The Guardian’s

books had been kept by a sunny optimist with a taste for fiction. This

gentleman had plugged up the discrepancies in the papers finances with

ingenious figures, as a boat-jerry might doctor a leaky seam with putty

and paint--for sale only.

The book figures showed but one scale of advertising rates, with the

normal discounts to heavy users of space. While the new toy was still

agleam in the eyes of its proud possessor with all the glamour of

novelty, he began to discover that instead of a standard price to

advertisers.

The Guardian had more scales than even so fishy a proposition was

entitled to; that, in fact, A. M. Wymett had peddled about his precious

advertising space like a man with stolen diamonds to sell, and covered

the shady transactions by a system of ingenious and destructive rebates.

Thus, the columns which young Mr. Robson had confidingly calculated

at four to nine cents per line, were actually fetching from five cents

downward.

“That’s the first thing to be set right,” announced Jeremy after a

profoundly unsatisfactory study of his property’s earning capacity as

contrasted with its paper profits. “We’ll have a one-price-to-all system

hereafter.”

“Ay-ah,” drawled Andrew Galpin, to whom the decision was communicated.

“Your advertisers ’ll just love that!”

“They ought to be satisfied. It’s the only square way.”

“Oh, they’ll be satisfied if you put the scale low enough. But if you

put the scale low enough you’ll go broke.”

“Wymett did n’t go broke.”

“The Guardian had other sources of revenue under Wymett.”

“Such as the Cheese Bill fund?”

“Occasionally. Also the steady, reliable revenue from the advertising

matter that does n’t bear the a-d-v sign.”

“You mean store ‘readers’ and that sort of thing? I’m going to cut those

out.”

“Are, you? They’re semi-legitimate. Compared with some of the stuff

we’ve carried they’re so high-principled they’re almost holy.”

“Well, what, for instance?”

“Paid editorials. Paid political articles. Paid puffs and roasts.

Brewery checks. Railroad checks. P.-U. checks. Paving and other

contractors’ checks. You can read it all in the back files, if you’re

newspaper man enough to read between the lines.”

“I never saw any of that on The Record.”

“It ain’t there. The Record don’t do it that way; a little more decent.

The Record’s a kept-lady. We’re on the street--or were.”

“‘Were’ is right.” Jeremy ran his hands through his hair and regarded

his companion anxiously. “Andy?” he said.

“Ay-ah?”

“Were you--Did you--Never mind. It does n’t matter.”

“Ay-ah; it matters all right. You were going to ask me whether I had to

write any of that bought-and-paid-for stuff. And you were afraid to. Is

that right?”

Jeremy turned red.

“It’s right,” confirmed the other. “Well, I never did. I would n’t. I

gave ’em notice that I was fired the noon of the morning I got one of

those jobs. They were decent about it. But I had to do the next worse

thing. I had to let myself be called off a story so that some other guy

could write it, and write it crooked.”

“Have we had any--any offers since we took hold of the paper?”

“Give ’em time, Boss. It’s only a month, and in the slack period at

that. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you’re going to change the entire

advertising policy, you’ll have to change your advertising manager, for

Perley don’t know anything different from the news-selling and rebate

game.”

“Perley’s fired.”

“So far, so good. Who ’ve you got to take his place?”

“Nobody, yet. Could you manage it, Andy?”

“Temporarily, I might. But I’m going to have my hands too full re-making

the old sheet on the news side to give much time to advertising, in the

next year or so.”

“Temporarily will do. I’m going to get the principal merchants together

and talk it out with them. And I want to show ’em a change in the

advertising managership that’ll convince ’em the change of policy is

real.”

“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “It sounds like the rumble of distant thunder

to me.”

“Not at all. All I want is a decent, living rate for the paper. Every

merchant expects a living profit on his merchandise. Why should n’t a

newspaper get the same?”

“Logical. Perfectly logical. But can you get ’em to see it that way?”

Andrew Galpin paused and then delivered himself of a characteristic bit

of shrewdness. “The average storekeeper regards advertising outlay as

a sort of accepted blackmail which he pays under protest; he don’t know

exactly why, and he don’t know exactly for what. If you made him reason

it out, he’d probably say that he don’t believe it pays, but everybody

does it. Of course, he don’t know whether it pays or not. Nobody does,

really.”

“Then why does he do it?”

“Because his competitors do. He’s afraid not to. He has some dim sort

of fear that the papers will soak him if he don’t. That’s where the

blackmail comes in, if he had sense enough to figure it.”

“There won’t be any blackmail with us.”

“But the merchants won’t know it. They’ll advertise, and because they

advertise they’ll think they’re entitled to a say in the paper. They’ll

try to run it for you, too.”

“Will they?” muttered Jeremy in a tone which suggested that there might

be difficulties attending the fulfillment of the ambition.

“Ay-ah. In good faith, too. There’s something in their theory--I

guess--from their point of view.”

“Well, I’ll give them a chance to explain it,” said the new owner. “My

plan is to round ’em up at a lunch, and then have it out with ’em.

What do you think?”

“Fine! Feed ’em. Then kick ’em in the stomach.”

“No, sir! pat ’em on the back and talk reason to them. That’s where

_you_ come in. They know you’re a real newspaper man. They’ve got

to find it out yet, about me.” Out of thirty of the principal local

advertisers in The Guardian, twenty-one accepted Jeremy Robson’s

invitation to lunch with him at the Fenchester Club, with a “business

conference” to follow. Their attitude toward the gustatory part of the

proceedings was that of wary fish toward food which might conceal a

hook. Very nice luncheon, but--what was behind it? They had never had

confidence in The Guardian under A. M. Wymett. Why should they have more

in an unknown quantity like young Robson?

Sensing plainly this feeling, Jeremy perceived that here was the time

and place for finesse. Unfortunately he lacked that particular quality.

What was the next best thing to having it at call, he appreciated his

want of it, and instead of blundering strategically around the point he

went straight to it in the briefest of speeches.

“Gentlemen: I’ve brought you here to state the new policy of The

Guardian. The advertising rate will be that of the rate card. The same

system of discounts to all. No rebates. I’d be glad to hear your views.”

He sat down. A hum of surprise went about the table. Some one started

applause: the effort was abortive. It was no occasion for empty

courtesies. This was business!

“Talks straight,” remarked Betts, of Kelter & Betts, dry goods, in a

loud whisper, to his neighbor Arthur Turnbull, of the Emporium.

“Bluff,” opined Turnbull.

“Get up and call it,” suggested A. Friedland, proprietor of the Big Shop

who had overheard.

“Let Ellison do the talking,” returned Turnbull. “He’s president of our

association.”

Obedient to several suggestions, Matthew Ellison, head of Ellison

Brothers’ department store and president of the Retailers’ Association,

reared his ample form, and smiled his conscientious smile, from above

a graying chin whisker, upon the assembled feasters. In a long and

rambling talk which Andrew Galpin would have fairly slaughtered with

an editorial blue pencil, Mr. Ellison referred to Jeremy something more

than two dozen times as “our esteemed young friend” and at least a

dozen as “my dear young friend”; both of which were equally accurate and

sincere. The gist of his speech, so far as any one present could grasp

it, seemed to indicate a guarded agnosticism concerning the announced

policy of the paper. Upon the heels of the windy compliment with which

he closed, Adolph Ahrens, junior partner and advertising manager of the

Great Northwestern Stores, popped up. Mr. Ahrens was a young, blackish,

combative-jawed man with twitchy eyes.

“This don’t go,” he said belligerently. “I’ve got a letter in my files,

stipulating a rebate, that’s as good as a contract.”

“Signed by?” queried Jeremy suggestively.

“Signed by The Guardian, per A. M. Wymett.”

“So have I,” declared Turnbull, and was echoed by Lehn, of Stormont &

Lehn, Betts, and half a dozen more.

“It seems to have been a habit,” remarked Jeremy. “But, gentlemen, A.

M. Wymett is no longer The Guardian. His secret rebates do not bind us

indefinitely.”

“The courts ’ll have a word to say on that,” declared the combative

Ahrens.

“Easy, gentlemen! Let’s be friendly,” purred Matthew Ellison.

“We need n’t go to the courts,” put in Andrew Galpin. “In the cases

where rebates were offered, the rate will be raised to a point where it

covers the rebates.”

“Where do _you_ come in?” demanded Ahrens.

“As acting advertising manager of The Guardian.”

“What becomes of your ‘one-rate-for-all’ claim?” Turnbull turned upon

Jeremy.

“Discarded,” said the owner, promptly accepting Galpin’s strategy.

“Why ain’d I neffer gud any discound?” inquired Bernard Stockmuller, the

leading jeweler of the town, in a powerful and plaintive voice.

“Because you never had the sense to stick out for it, Barney,” retorted

Betts. “You were easy.”

“There you have the unfairness of the system,” Jeremy pointed out. “Mr.

Stockmuller is as frequent a user of space as some of you who have taken

rebates. Gentlemen, it does n’t go any more.”

“Well, this is a hell of a note!” murmured a discontented voice which

seemed to emanate from the depths of the abdominal curve of the senior

partner of Arndt & Niebuhr, furniture dealers.

“Did any of these private letters from Mr. Wymett mention reading

notices as an extra inducement?” asked the host of the occasion. .

“There was no need,” stated Ellison. “‘Readers’ are a recognized

courtesy to advertisers.”

“They take up space,” Jeremy pointed out. “They cost money, for ink,

paper, and setting up. From the newspaper’s viewpoint, they’re a dead

loss.”

“We pay for ’em in our advertising bills,” said Friedland, of the Big

Shop.

“Then you regard them as advertising?”

“Certainly.”

“But they don’t appear as advertising. They are in regular news type,

made up to look like news items, and they carry no a-d-v mark.”

Matthew Ellison took it upon his kindly self to enlighten this innocent

young adventurer in untried fields. “If they appeared as advertising,

the public would be less likely to read them.”

“Then they’re a fraud on the public.”

“Fraud? Oh, really, Mr. Robson,” deprecated the merchant. “A--a

harmless--er--subterfuge.”

“The Guardian cuts them out,” announced The Guardian’s revolutionary

proprietor. “No more ‘readers’ except with the a-d-v sign, and paid for

at full rates.”

“What are you trying to do--insult us?” growled the saturnine Mr.

Ahrens.

“You would have to be mighty thin-skinned to find an insult in that.”

“Well, drive us out of the paper, then?”

“That would be pretty foolish of me, would n’t it?”

“Would be? It _is_. First you violate an agreement--”

“To which I was not a party.”

“--and then you try to raise rates on us; and now you cut out the best

advertising the department store gets.”

“As for raising rates, I have n’t suggested it except as an offset to

rebates.”

“Comes to the same thing,” said several voices.

“Gentlemen,” said Jeremy with an accession of positiveness, “you’re

getting the best advertising rate in the State of Centralia to-day. With

practically ten thousand circulation--”

“Bunk!” interjected Turnbull.

“Upwards of nine thousand, seven hundred.”

“A good third of it pads and graft copies,” put in Betts.

For the first time Jeremy was at a disadvantage. He glanced quickly at

Galpin.

“Nothing of the sort,” declared that gentleman readily.

“How much is your list padded?” challenged Vogt the florist, in his

slightly thickened accent. “Come on, now! On the level.”

“Tell them, Mr. Galpin,” directed Jeremy. “Our cards are on the table.”

“I don’t know. But it’s padded all right,” confessed the general

manager. “Not a third. Not a quarter. But--well, enough.”

For the second time that day Jeremy Robson took a snap resolution.

“Appoint a committee to go over the books, Mr. Ellison,” said he. “Make

your estimate of _bona fide_ circulation, and I’ll adjust my rate to

make it as low per thousand as any daily in the State of equal size. Is

that fair?”

“Yes. I guess that’s fair enough,” answered the Retailers’ Association

president, hesitantly.

“That don’t satisfy me,” asserted Ahrens.

“What will, Mr. Ahrens?” asked Jeremy politely.

“‘Readers,’ like the Great Northwestern’s always had.”

“The next time I come to your store to buy a necktie, will you throw in

a box of collars?”

“It ain’t the same thing.”

“Pardon me; it’s precisely the same, considered as a deal. You don’t

give people more than they pay for. Why should you expect to get it? All

I ask for The Guardian is a living profit on the plant and product.”

“Wymett made a living out of it.”

“What Mr. Wymett did is not under discussion.”

“I’ll say this for it, though,” interjected Galpin. “We’re not going to

make the kind of living in the kind of way that Mr. Wymett made his. Get

that, you men?”

The stir that this roused was sufficient evidence of general knowledge

concerning The Guardian’s former management.

“Now, you’re talking!” said Betts.

“Dot’s goot. I like dot,” added Stockmuller.

It was the first evidence of approval that the new policy had elicited.

“So much having been said,” proceeded Jeremy: “I’ll tell you gentlemen

this. The Guardian is going to be run straight. If you ever see any

evidence that it is n’t, I want to know it.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Robson,” said Ellison warmly.

“That’s the kind of thing we want to hear. We’re all for that and will

wish you the success you deserve. And now there’s one more matter I

think ought to be taken up here. We considered it at the last meeting of

the association, and this is as good a time and place as any to thrash

it out. Speaking for myself and associates, Mr. Robson, we’d like to

know what consideration an advertiser in The Guardian may expect at its

hands.”

“Consideration?” Jeremy said, puzzled.

“In the matter of news.”

Another side-glance at Galpin apprised Jeremy that this was at least as

important as anything that had gone before.

“I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you to explain,” said Jeremy.

“I will give you an example: the case which we had up for discussion

at our last meeting. It concerns one of our members, Mr. Barclay, of

Barclay & Bull, shoe dealers. Barclay & Bull are liberal advertisers in

The Guardian, Mr. Robson.”

“Yes.”

“Last Tuesday The Guardian published a report of the Blair Street

Methodist Church meeting, which put Mr. Barclay in a quite unfortunate

light.”

“Was n’t our report accurate?”

“I am not saying whether it was accurate or inaccurate,” returned

Ellison conservatively. “The point is that it was unfortunate. It

subjected Mr. Barclay to criticism. How could Mr. Barclay foresee that

The Guardian, which his firm had always patronized, would catch up a

hasty and somewhat violent expression used in the heat of debate, and

publish it?”

“The meeting was a public meeting. Why should n’t we report it?”

“My dear young friend, I am endeavoring to tell you. Do you not owe

something to Mr. Barclay, as an advertiser?”

“Does Mr. Barclay owe anything to me because I buy my shoes at his

store?”

Mr. Ellison’s face shone with the prognostication of argumentative

triumph. “Pree-cisely the point! He does. He owes you courtesy as a

patron. You owe him courtesy as a patron. That article should, if I may

express an opinion, have omitted his name.”

“I see. Because Mr. Barclay is an advertiser in The Guardian.”

“Quite so,” beamed Ellison.

“But I’m selling Mr. Barclay advertising, not news.”

“The courtesy due to an--”

“Pardon me. It’s no question of courtesy. The Guardian sells its news to

its readers. It sells its advertising to its advertisers. You’ve got two

different things badly mixed.”

Mr. Ellison looked crestfallen, but rallied to another and more direct

argument. “Barclay & Bull intend withdrawing their advertising from The

Guardian.”

“That’s their affair,” said Jeremy shortly.

“But, surely, my dear young friend, it is equally the affair of your

paper.”

“If it’s a question of Barclay & Bull withdrawing their advertising

or The Guardian withdrawing its news policy, we’ll have to hump along

without the advertising.”

“Look here!” The twitchy eyes of Adolph Ahrens focused themselves

angrily on the host. “S’pose I go motoring up to Bellair. S’pose I get

pinched by a joy constable. S’pose I send around word I want it kept out

of the paper. Don’t I get a show?”

“Not a show,” declared Jeremy good-humoredly. “You’re too prominent a

character, Mr. Ahrens, not to make good reading.”

From the ventriloqual depths of Mr. Arndt there again emanated that

gentleman’s conviction concerning the infernal quality of the note of

Mr. Robson’s conversation.

Engel the grocer saw The Guardian’s finish, and made no secret of his

prophetic vision.

Aaron Levy, pursuing his trade under the ambitious title of “The

Fashion,” expressed the opinion that no man’s business was safe in a

town where such practices were permitted.

“Und you maig funny-nesses aboud the Chermans, too,” accused Bernard

Stockmuller, the jeweler, unexpectedly.

Vogt came to his support. “That reporter ought to be fired,” he

proclaimed. “The one that wrote the police court article about the

brewery driver.”

“‘Why, there was no malice in that,” defended Jeremy. “It was all

good-natured fun.”

“It wass fun at the Chermans,” declared Stockmuller. “Cherman accents.

Cherman ignorances. What you wan ta pigk on the Chermans for, always?”

“We don’t, Mr. Stockmuller. That’s absurd. We’d print an Irish dialect

story just as quickly. In fact we do, frequently.”

“You should understand,” said Blasius the hatter, heavily, “that we

Germans are as good citizens as anybody else.”

“Granted, but--”

“And priddy heavy advertisers in The Guardian.” This was Vogt’s

contribution.

Jeremy began to lose his temper. “Gentlemen,” said he sharply, “if you

take over the job of running The Guardian as you seem to wish to do,

where do I come in?”

“Easy! Friendly!” pacified Ellison. “No use in getting excited.”

“Thinks he can run the town,” growled Ahrens.

“There is much in Mr. Robson’s point of view,” continued the pourer of

oil. “And I am sure that he will concede the force of much that has been

said upon the other side. In any case I am sure we have all come to a

better understanding, and that we thank Mr. Robson most appreciatively

for his bounteous hospitality. And, now, gentlemen, I propose that

we--er--adjourn.”

Ahrens and two of the others forgot to bid Jeremy good-bye. When all had

left, the giver of the feast turned to his lieutenant.

“Well, they know where we stand. How many advertisers will it lose us?”

“I don’t know that it’ll lose us any, right away.”

“Ahrens, surely.”

“Don’t believe it. He’ll be afraid to drop out. He don’t understand your

go-to-hell attitude.”

“Was I as bad as that, Andy?”

“I’m taking his point of view. He don’t understand it, and probably he

don’t believe it. Thinks it’s bluff. But he’s scared and he’s cautious.

So he’ll stay in--for a while, anyway. What we’ve got to do in the long

run, is to keep ’em all scared.”

“Going in for blackmail, Andy?” smiled his boss.

“Keep ’em scared, by making the paper so strong that they dassent do

without it.”

“That means more circulation.”

“It means more circulation, a lot of it, and pretty darn quick. That’s

my job.”

Arrived at the office, Jeremy got his final glimpse of the day into the

ramifications of advertising. In his editorial sanctum waited a mild,

self-possessed, and profoundly laconic Chinaman.

“Take ad?” inquired he.

“Your ad? What is it?”

“Laundry.” He proffered a neat and competently prepared two-inch

single column “card,” announcing that Wong Kee stood ready to perform

high-class laundering for the discerning public at reasonable prices.

“All right. Take it to the Advertising window.”

“No good.”

“Why not?”

“Turn down.”

“Nonsense!”

“Chinese laundry. Turn down,” asseverated Wong Kee evenly.

“When did you try?”

“Nineteen-eight. Nineteen-nine. Nineteen-ten. Nineteen-eleven.”

“Every year? Nineteen-twelve wins.”

Jeremy marked “Must J. R.” on the copy and sent the satisfied Celestial

downstairs.

On the following morning, eight local professional apostles of

cleanliness, comprising the Laundry Association of Fenchester,

indignantly notified The Guardian of the withdrawal of their patronage.

“Even the laundrymen want to edit the paper for us,” the disgusted

Jeremy observed to Galpin. “Well, they can stay out till hell breaks

loose under the State of Centralia.”

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what they did.

CHAPTER II

NO advertising patronage was lost to The Guardian as the result of

the luncheon-conference. But Jeremy Robson’s offer to let a committee

investigate his circulation was costly. More than fifteen per cent

of The Guardian’s list proved either “phony” or dubious. Jeremy

reconstituted his rate card in accordance with the actual figures, and

cut recklessly into his free list. Appeased by this practical and to

them profitable concession, the Retailers’ Association abandoned

the issue of rebates. For the time, at least, they accepted the new

proprietor’s distasteful decision as to “readers.” The matter of

“courtesies” extended to advertisers was left in abeyance. That was sure

to come up in the inevitable course of events. The general status was

that of a truce, with one side wary and the other disgruntled.

Unsatisfactory though this might be to the mercantile element, it was

more so to the newspaper. For The Guardian simply could not make

a living at the reduced rates. There was but one thing to be done:

increase circulation, thereby giving the paper augmented advertising

value, and raise the advertising rates proportionately. It had been

agreed between the Retailers’ Association committee and Jeremy that

in view of his reduction of tariff, there would be no opposition to an

increase when the circulation should warrant it. Ellison and the

other committeemen did not believe that The Guardian could add to its

circulation materially. Jeremy and his general manager did. They did n’t

know just how. They only knew that it had to, or pass ignominiously out

of existence!

So they took the customary business-man’s gamble. In the hope of making

money they spent money. The paper began to swell out and look lively

and prosperous. But Jeremy’s bank account evidenced the ravages of a

galloping consumption. And though the public talked about The Guardian

and speculated interestedly upon its future, it did not fall over itself

to subscribe. It waited to see and be convinced. The public has that

habit.

Meanwhile two able gentlemen with no ostensible interest in journalism

were quietly watching and estimating the course of The Guardian.

President Montrose Clark, of the Fenchester Public Utilities

Corporation, and his legal aide-de-camp Judge Selden Dana, a pair

far more potent in Fenchester’s political affairs than Fenchester’s

undisceming citizenry ever dreamed, were concerned with the newspapers

as affecting their own plans, and were specially concerned with Jeremy

Robson’s newspaper because they possessed no reliable data on young Mr.

Robson.

“Do you know him?” asked Judge Dana.

“No,” replied Montrose Clark, whose interview with the “rippawtah” of

The Record had failed to leave any memory of the young man’s name.

“What do you think of The Guardian since he got it?”

“It’s silly,” pronounced Mr. Clark loftily.

“Silly? Would you call it silly?”

“I _have_ called it silly. It is beginning to show leanings toward a

half-baked radicalism.”

“Robson is very young.”

“Even socialistic tendencies,” pursued the other.

“Socialism is anything that holds up our programme,” grinned the lawyer,

who occasionally permitted himself the private luxury of frankness.

The public utilitarian frowned. “Have you been reading the articles on

tax-dodgers?”

“I have.”

“What is the purpose of them, if not to stir up socialistic unrest?”

“Sensation, I should say. The series has been popular. When Mr. Average

Citizen reads in his paper that he is being taxed twice as heavily as

Mr. Rich Man next door, he’s interested. He begins to think the paper is

a devil of a paper. He talks about it. That helps.”

“Suppose The Guardian should attack Us on the tax issue?”

“That also would be interesting,” remarked Dana. “But they won’t. Our

trail is too well covered. It would take them a year to get at the

facts.”

“But what’s the young fool driving at, anyway, Dana?” The lawyer rubbed

his long angular jaw, and the somnolent look of his eyes deepened

into musing. “I figure he’s making a bid for the radical support. The

radicals have never had a show here, and he may be able to rally them to

him.”

“What do they amount to, the radicals! A newspaper has got to have the

support of people with money.”

“That’s the accepted theory,” admitted the lawyer. “What do you know of

young Robson’s financial status!”

“Quite a bit. I handled the sale for Wymett.”

“Yes; yes. A good bargain for Wymett. Eh?”

“A stroke of fortune.”

“How much has Robson got behind him?”

“Not much. Twenty thousand. Perhaps twenty-five.”

Mr. Clark looked relieved. “I think we need have no misgivings.”

“I’m not so sure. A paper with radical leanings might find material in

that transfer ordinance of ours when it comes up again. Even some of our

good friends balk at that as pretty raw.”

“An essential step to our expansion, Dana,” said the public utilitarian

blandly.

“Exactly. But an uncharitable mind mightn’t see it that way. Which

reminds me: Embree is threatening a legislative investigation if the

ordinance goes through.”

“Local matters are no affair of Embree’s,” declared the other angrily.

“Fortunately he has no newspaper backing.”

“Has n’t he? I wish I were sure.”

“You don’t think that young Robson has sold out to Embree already?”

“No.”

“Very well, then--”

“Not sold out. It is n’t a question of cash. This boy is n’t A. M.

Wymett.”

“Nevertheless a newspaper is a business proposition,” opined Montrose

Clark dryly.

“It ought to be. Much simpler if it were. But this boy is a bit of

a sentimentalist. I’m afraid he’s in the way of being influenced by

Smiling Mart’s line of clap-trap.”

“Then we must act promptly.” The public utilitarian sat, thoughtful.

“We’ll start a campaign of public education on the transfer question,

through the newspapers,” he decided. “Including, of course, The

Guardian.”

“Straight-out, a-d-v kind of advertising?”

“Hardly. The usual thing. Well-prepared articles. Perhaps a careful

editorial or two. Do you think it too early?”

“Not too early. Too late for The Guardian. It won’t take ’em.”

“Oh, I think it will,” returned the other comfortably. “At our special

rate.”

“Not at any price, the editorials. The ‘readers,’ yes. But they’ll have

the ‘a-d-v’ sign at the bottom. Maybe the ‘P.-U.’ trade-mark also.”

Montrose Clark’s face puffed red. “Where do you get your information?”

“From inside,” answered Dana, whose special virtue and value was to be

“inside” on all available sources of information. “Those are the new

orders.”

“Robson’s?”

“I suppose so. Andrew Galpin may have a hand in it. He’s in general

charge.”

“I think I can persuade those young gentlemen,” remarked Montrose Clark

sardonically, “that it is not to their interest to impose troublesome

restrictions upon the corporation.”

He pressed a button. There arrived upon the scene, with an effect of

automatic response, that smooth, flawless, noiseless, expressionless

piece of human mechanism, Edward Garson, the hand-perfected private

secretary who, besides his immediate duties about the great man’s

person, acted as go-between in minor matters, press-agent, and

advertising manager for the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation.

Concerning him, Judge Dana had once remarked that the queerest thing

about it was that it also had brains.

“Garson,” barked Montrose Clark, in the tone which he deemed

appropriate.

The hand-perfected secretary bowed.

“Bring in The Guardian advertising account.”

The secretary bowed again and disappeared. Almost immediately he was

back, bowing once more over a neatly typed single sheet of paper.

“What is our total expenditure in The Guardian for the current year, up

to date?”

“For display advertising, eleven hundred and forty-seven dollars, sixty

cents. For reading matter, two hundred and seventy-five.”

“That includes editorial matter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in The Record?”

“Seventeen hundred and twenty, sir. All display. They make no charge for

editorials or readers, you recall, sir.”

“True. We pay them a higher rate for display, and the editorial support

is--er--”

“By way of gratitude,” suggested Dana.

“Exactly. Do you think, Dana, that either paper is in a position to

discard the P.-U.’s support?”

“Just a moment,” said the lawyer. “That display advertising bill of The

Guardian’s; what was the bill as rendered?”

Looking to Montrose Clark for permission and receiving it in a nod, the

hand-perfected secretary replied, “Sixteen hundred dollars.”

“Scaled down to a net of about eleven hundred and fifty.”

“Yes. With discounts and rebates.”

“Wymett fooled Robson worse than I had supposed. The young fool bought

on the basis of the book rates. Discounts and rebates are going to be an

unpleasant surprise to him.”

“All of which will make him the easier to handle.”

“Maybe. With gloves.”

“It is not my habit,” said the local potentate austerely, “to concern

myself deeply with other people’s over-sensitiveness, when it is a

matter of business.”

“Go easy with him,” insisted the other. “He’s got a temper. There’s a

kind of a you-be-damned-ness about him. He’s a little puffed up with his

new sense of power, and we’ve got to allow for that.”

“Sense of power?” The magnate looked puzzled for the moment. “Oh, you

mean his paper!” He laughed. “All right, Dana. I’ll be tactful with him.

But of course I shan’t tolerate any nonsense.”

The retort, “I doubt if he will, either,” was on the tip of the lawyer’s

tongue. He suppressed it. It would only have irritated Montrose Clark’s

vanity which, under friction, was prone to develop prickly heat.

Let him find out for himself how to handle human nettles if he could n’t

take cannier men’s advice!

CHAPTER III

JUDGE DANA’S surmise as to Senator Embree and The Guardian partook

of the genius of prophecy. “Smiling Mart” had been waiting to assure

himself about the new control of the paper. Conviction grew within him

that Jeremy Robson was the man he was looking for: that the seed planted

with forethought in the mind of the unimportant Record reporter was

now bringing forth harvest in The Guardian. Embree decided upon open

measures.

Returning from a hasty luncheon one day, Jeremy found his den irradiated

by the famous Embree smile. He was glad to see it. At the points of

intersection where politics and newspaper work cross, he had encountered

the leader from the Northern Tier perhaps half a dozen times since their

first interview, and had liked him better each time, though their talks

had been on the professional and impersonal order. No conversation with

Martin Embree, however, was ever wholly impersonal. He was too intense

a humanist for that. As the Legislature had adjourned for the summer,

Jeremy was surprised to see Embree at the capital.

“Hello, Senator,” he said, shaking hands. “What brings you down here in

all this heat and dust?”

“You,” smiled his visitor.

“Well, I apologize. I did n’t do it purposely. But I’m glad to see you.”

“So here you are, a real newspaper owner. Congratulations, by the way.”

Jeremy nodded. “Do you remember a little talk we had in my room, one

night?”

“Very well.”

“This is the next stage in the fairy-tale. Well, I talked pretty

openly that evening. As a rule I don’t give myself away in chance

conversation.”

Harking back, Jeremy failed to recall that the rising politician had

given himself away, in any sense. He leaned back in his chair and

waited.

“I’ve been watching your course with The Guardian,” continued the

Senator earnestly. “I wanted to see which way you were going. Now I

know.”

“What convinced you?”

“Your editorial on the tax-dodging railroads. That,” said Senator

Embree, his brilliant smile playing again, “was a soaker. A soaker! I

expect you heard from that.”

“I did.”

“Did they yelp?”

“They did.”

“Threaten?”

“What could they threaten?”

“That’s true; what could they?” repeated the other thoughtfully. “They

would n’t know where to have you. You’re an undetermined quantity to

them. And as such they don’t know your price. Have they tried to find it

out?”

“Not openly enough to be caught at it.”

“They’ve been trying to get at mine ever since I came to the Legislature

as a grass-green young kid of an Assemblyman. I guess they’ll find out

yours about the time they find out mine. And, for a further guess, the

two prices will be about the same. Eh?”

“That also is possible,” conceded the editor demurely.

“The Record did n’t spoil you. I was afraid it might. They’re so slick

and respectable over there! But as soon as you began to get your muscle

into The Guardian’s editorials, I saw which side you were on. And the

tax attack settled it in my mind that you’re for the public and against

the corporation grafters.”

“I’m against the corporations when they don’t play fair.”

“That’s good enough for me! They never do play fair. Not in politics.”

“I don’t go that far,” said Jeremy.

“You will,” smiled the other. “Give you time. You’ll come to it. You’re

with us and you’re going to be with us stronger and stronger.”

“It depends on who ‘us’ is, and what policies are involved,” replied the

editor, not wholly pleased at being thus confidently catalogued.

“The radicals. The clean, common voters who believe that the people

should run their own government for themselves.”

“So far, all right. I’m for that.”

“I knew you were. And here I am.” The smile now fairly surcharged the

little office.

“And here you are. What can I do for you, Senator?”

“Wrong, my boy! Wrong for once. It’s the other way around.”

“What can you do for me, then?”

The smile was replaced by a look of candor and earnestness. “Mr. Robson,

you’ve got to increase the sale of this paper, have n’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I can boost the circulation of The Guardian a thousand copies. Perhaps

fifteen hundred.”

“Will you take the job of circulation manager?” asked Jeremy, smiling.

“That’s another point. I’ll come to that later. Now, there’s no bluff

about this, Robson. I’m in dead earnest.”

“If you can tell me how to put on circulation without its costing all

I’ve got--”

“It’ll cost you nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Then it will be different from any circulation scheme I’ve heard of

yet.”

“Listen. Up in the Northern Tier I’m strong. They know me. They believe

in me. If I pass the word that The Guardian is my organ--”

“The Guardian is nobody’s organ.”

“I understand. The mouthpiece of our policies, I should have said.

The policies and principles you and I stand for, reform and

anti-dollar-domination. If I pass that word about The Guardian they’ll

take it like the Bible.”

“There might be something in that,” conceded the editor, who knew the

almost idolatrous quality of Embree’s following in his own district.

“Make no mistake about it. It’ll mean four or five hundred copies in my

own town, and it ought to run to a thousand more in the county outside.”

“That won’t help much in getting local advertising, here in Fenchester.”

“No. But it will help out your foreign advertising.”

“How do you know so much about the newspaper game?” asked the editor,

struck by the other’s use of the technical term. “Ever been in it?”

“I study everything that has a bearing on politics in this State. I

could pretty nearly tell you how much The Guardian stands to lose this

year.”

“Don’t!” said Jeremy, with a wry face.

“Unless you can raise your rates. And I’m showing you the way. Right

here in Fenchester, as soon as the common people are satisfied that you

really represent their interests, subscriptions will flood you.”

Suspicion of the phrase beset Jeremy. “I’m not going in for any

demagogue, yellow journal stuff.”

“Nobody wants you to. Just a decent, clean, fair-minded, progressive

radicalism. If I can stand up in my next campaign and say honestly that

there is a newspaper at the State capital, in the stronghold of old-line

politics and graft, that represents what I stand for, that newspaper is

going to boom. And I’m ready to do it.”

“On what terms?”

“None.”

“Just out of regard for my fascinating personality?” Martin Embree’s

smile appeared again, conciliatory, persuasive, earnest. “Let’s

understand each other, Robson. I’m convinced that you’re on the level.

That’s the first point. I’m convinced that you’re honestly a radical,

even if you’re a mild one. That’s the Second. Barring differences on

minor policies which are bound to arise between independent-minded

men, you and I stand for the same principles. You know my motivating

ambition?”

“The governorship,” replied Jeremy innocently.

A furrow of annoyance appeared between the lofty brows of the Senator.

“The ambition of my life,” he said emphatically, “is to serve the people

of this State by delivering our government out of the clutches of the

corporations. To that end I will accept any office, high or low, within

the gift of the voters.”

Oratorical as was the delivery, there was a certain ring of enthusiasm

which went far to convince the editor. In the years to come, of constant

alliance with Martin Embree, Robson satisfied himself of the man’s

essential devotion to the cause which he had made his own, a devotion

second only to the monstrous egotism which subordinated all causes

and all principles to his own rodent ambition, or, rather, merged and

absorbed them in that ambition.

“Of course; of course,” apologized the editor. “But you _do_ want to be

Governor, don’t you?”

“I’m going to be Governor,” was the positive response. “Not all their

money can stop me. This campaign of mine for reelection to the Senate is

really a preliminary skirmish for the bigger thing. I could be reelected

without lifting a finger, so far as that goes. But I want to hammer home

the State issues. And if you and I hammer at the same time, it is n’t

going to do either of us a bit of harm! By the way, you ought to have

agents on the ground to boost your circulation in the places where I

campaign. Who’s your circulation manager?”

“A routine scrub. No good. I’m shipping him. Do you happen to know of

any one?”

“Yes. I’ve got the very man for you, if he’ll come. Max Verrall, a live

wire on The Forreston Tribune. He’s a youngster, but a hustler. I think

I can get him for you.”

“I’ll take him on your say-so.”

“Now, let me give you a pointer or two on getting hold of the country

districts. We’re streaky on nationalities out through this State.

There’s a point to play for. Get after their feelings for the home

country with a tactful editorial or a bit of translated matter now and

then if you can lay your hands on it. Tickle their little vanities.

That’s what I do on my speaking tours. If it’s a Swedish community, I

tell ’em the Scandahoovians are the backbone of the Middle West. In

a German district--and the State is thick with ’em--I boost German

efficiency, the system to which the rest of the world goes to school.”

“Speaking of Germans _and_ schools,” remarked Robson; “I’m told that

they don’t even teach in English in some of the country districts.

I’ve been thinking of starting a campaign on that, one of these days.

Americanization--that ought to be a good slogan.”

“Off it, my boy!” said the Senator emphatically. “Hara-kiri is cheaper.

Nobody is so touchy as your German-American on the subject of language

and race. Don’t butt into a stone wall.”

“Wymett had a pet theory that Germany is getting ready for a world-war

and the German-Americans are already at their propaganda to influence

this country.”

“Bosh! I never could quite make out whether Wymett was more crazy than

crooked, or _vice versa_.”

“Just the same, I’ve noticed that quite a little reprint stuff boosting

Germany drifts into this office. Anecdotes about the Kaiser and that

sort of thing.”

“Print ’em! Print ’em all. It’ll make the paper solid just where you

most need support.”

“So I do, some of ’em, on their merits. It’s good stuff when fillers

are needed. Only, when the propaganda side is too plain, I can it.”

“Get your mind off this propaganda notion,” pleaded his adviser. “The

Germans are the best element of our citizenship to-day, and any man or

institution that goes up against them is _through_. Some lunatics are

trying to make a political issue of it. Magnus Laurens is. And they’re

talking of running him for Governor next time, because they think

they’ll need a respectable figurehead rather than one of the old,

discredited gang to beat me with. Lord! I’d ask nothing better than to

have Laurens against me, with his crank Know-Nothing conservatism that

he calls Americanism.”

“I liked Mr. Laurens,” said Jeremy.

“You won’t when you’ve fought him as long as I have. Speaking of

Germans, do you know Emil Bausch?”

“Only by sight.”

“He’s president of the Fenchester Deutscher Club and a mighty good

friend of mine. He wants to get in touch with you.”

“He called once, but I was out.”

“Bausch is a little ponderous at first, but he’s all right when you

get used to his ways. And he’s a power among the Germans. Don’t forget

that.”

“Between you and Wymett and Eli Wade I’m not likely to forget the

Germans,” laughed Jeremy.

“Wade? Poor chap. That was an unfortunate thing, that row of his. Well,

he’s good on the feet, but weak in the head. Do you know Milliken, his

crony?”

“Yes. He has n’t much use for you.”

“So he tells me every time he sees me. He considers me a slinker because

he says I’m a Socialist at heart, but my heart is weak. Socialism is all

right in its way. It’s a good vaccination, but a bad disease. Milliken’s

working in your shop now, is n’t he?”

“Is he? I did n’t know it.”

“Stick to me and you’ll learn a lot of things,” smiled the politician.

“Yes; he’s assistant to Big Girdner in the press-room. There’s another

German for you, Girdner, and a good one. Well, I’ll tell Emil Bausch to

come in again to see you.” At the door he paused. “By the way, are you

likely to be interested personally in politics?”

“Office for myself? No. I’ve got my hands full now.”

“Later, perhaps. Well, if you should want anything for any of your

friends, let me know. Perhaps I could manage it.”

“Could you? Locally?”

“I have a little influence locally, as a member of the Cities

Improvement Committee.”

“We were speaking of Eli Wade a moment ago,” said Jeremy. “Something

I wrote in The Record helped to get him out of a job he was very proud

of.”

“The Public Schools Board? Yes: I know.”

“It was tough on the old boy. I’d like to make that up to him. Do you

think you could get him put back?”

“Hardly that. You see, he got the Germans stirred up. He was out of

place on the Board, anyway. Education is the special political bent of

the German-Americans, you know. No; I’m afraid he’s finished there. But

I might look around and see if there is n’t something else that would

be just as good for him. It’s just the little honor of having an office

that flatters his type of mind.”

“I’d be mightily obliged if you could,” said Jeremy. Martin Embree

lost no time on the Bausch matter. On the morrow of his interview with

Jeremy, there stalked into the editorial den of The Guardian, a tall,

plethoric form buttoned within the frock coat and wearing the silk hat

of high ceremony. The form introduced itself with a pronounced guttural

accent as President Bausch, of the Deutscher Club, removed the hat,

unbuttoned the coat, took from the breast-pocket thereof a document

formidable with seals and tape, dandled the precious thing reverently in

its hands, and addressed the editor with solemnity.

“I have here somedthing of grade importance for your paper.”

“Take a seat,” offered the editor.

The document-bearer complied. “Id is a ledder from Prindz Henry to the

Cherman Singing Societies of America.”

“The original?” asked Jeremy, regarding the waxed and tapered curio with

interest.

“Certainly not! The orichinal is mounted and framed in New York. This is

the official copy.”

“It certainly looks official.”

“Id iss to be printed on Ventzday.”

“You mean that it is released for Wednesday.”

“Id iss to be printed on Ventzday,” reiterated the solemn emissary. “It

should appear on your frondt page.”

Had Mr. Bausch but known it, this landed him full upon the editor’s

pet toe: a toe, moreover, by this time angrily sore from over-frequent

treadings. It was no time to be telling the new proprietor and editor of

that free and untrammeled organ, The Guardian, what to and what not to

print, or where to locate it.

“It will if it’s worth it.” stated that gentleman briefly.

“Wordth? Id iss _most_ important,” his visitor assured him. “I have also

here the material from which could be derifed a valuable editorial--”

“I can’t really see that such a letter, even though it be news, is a

subject for editorial comment in The Guardian,” said Jeremy impatiently.

“Do you understand _whoo_ this ledder iss from?” cried the other.

“Prindz Henry! Our Kaiser’s brother. And you tell me--”

“Whose Kaiser’s brother? Not mine.”

An incredulous and pious shock passed over the face of Mr. Emil Bausch.

“Not yours! What matters you? The Kaiser of all goodt Chermans.” He

contemplated the young man with gloomy severity. “If id was the Prindz

of Vales I will bet you prindt it.”

Unversed in the carefully inbred German hatred and jealousy of all

things British, Jeremy was mildly puzzled.

“Why so?” he asked.

“I bet you are a Inklish-lover. I bet you are a Cherman-hater. You would

prindt the Prindz of Vales ledder. Hein?”

“Just as much or as little as I shall print of this.”

“As liddle? You will edit _this_; Prindz Henry’s own words?”

“If there’s too much of it.”

Dumbfounded at the proposed sacrilege, Mr. Bausch retrieved the precious

roll and held it ready to thrust back into the pocket of the frock coat.

“All or nothing,” he said.

“Nothing, then.”

“I will rebort this at the next meeting of the Deutscher Club,” growled

the departing Teuton.

“Send us a copy of the minutes,” retorted the exasperated Jem. “Perhaps

we’ll give you an editorial on those.”

He finished his writing and leaned back to meditate upon the possible

results of this encounter when a well-remembered voice in the hall

spoke his name, in a tone of business-like inquiry, to the youth on duty

there.

“Come right in, Buddy,” called Jeremy.

Buddy Higman entered. He was dressed with extreme correctness, even to

the extent of a whole and intact pair of suspenders, and his Sunday

coat which he carried genteelly over his arm. Jeremy pointed an accusing

finger at him.

“I know what you’ve come here for.”

“Gee!” murmured Buddy, impressed.

“You’ve come to tell me how to run my paper.”

“Me?” said Buddy.

“Or to order something put in.”

“What--”

“Or kept out.”

“No, sir,” said the astounded Buddy.

“What!! Don’t you know how to run my paper better than I do?”

“N-n-no, sir.”

“Then you’re unique in this town. Come to my arms. I mean, sit down.

What’s that you’re trying to get out of your pocket?”

“A--a--a letter, sir.”

“Hah! I knew it. From the Kaiser!”

“No, sir. I don’t know him,” said Buddy nervously. “What are you

calling me ‘sir’ for?” demanded Jeremy, suspicious at this unaccustomed

courtesy.

“I want a job.”

“Oh, you want a job! Here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you good for in a newspaper office?”

“Nothin’.”

“That’s a fine recommendation. Do you expect to get the job on the

strength of it?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir. On this.”

After much painful struggling the urchin succeeded in extracting from

his pocket a note which he placed in Jeremy’s hands. At sight of it,

all residue of raillery died out of the editor’s face. Though he had

but once seen Marcia’s writing, he knew, at the first glance, the bold,

frank, delicate, upright characters for hers. The note was undated. He

read, with a feeling that the world had changed and sweetened about him,

her words.

_Dear Jem:

If you ever can, give Buddy a chance; some work that will not interfere

with his schooling. I wish you two to look after each other.

And, oh, my dear, do please not quite altogether forget

Marcia_

Jeremy sat in a long silence. The boy did not disturb it. Finally the

young man looked up.

“When did she give you this, Buddy?”

“Before she went away.”

“All right. You get the job.”

“Thanks. I knew I would,” said the urchin confidently. “I c’n start in

to-morrow.” He watched, sympathetically, the other fold the note and

bestow it in his pocket.

“Mr. Robson,” he said. “She said a queer thing when she gimme the

letter.”

“What was that?”

“She said--you know how her eyes get solemn and big and--and kinda light

up, deep inside, when she means a thing _hard_--she said, ‘Buddy, I

shall like to think that you and he are looking after each other.’ What

did she mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think it over.”

“Well, I been thinkin’ it over an’ I don’t get it.” He paused. Then

with the self-centered simplicity of boyhood, “Mr. Robson, I miss her

somethin’ fierce. You don’t know how I miss her.”

“Don’t I!” retorted Jeremy involuntarily, with a stab of pain.

“Nobody could,” stated the other with conviction.

So Jeremy and Buddy Higman became fellow-workers. Buddy’s job was

decidedly indeterminate. It did n’t matter. In taking him on Jeremy was

performing his first definite service to Marcia.

A week later his second was completed. Eli Wade was appointed a member

of the Library Board. The Guardian chronicled the appointment more

conspicuously than its unimportance as news warranted. Jeremy hoped that

in some manner Marcia would see or hear of it.

CHAPTER IV

MARTIN EMBREE more than fulfilled his word.

As if a royal patent had been issued in favor of The Guardian, the

Senator’s zealous partisans of the Northern Tier bestowed upon it their

patronage. Max Verrall, who revealed himself as a brisk and unfettered

spirit with political ambitions and a slavish fervency for Embree, did

the actual work of establishing the circulation in the district, and did

it so well that Jeremy Robson had no misgivings in turning over to him

the circulation managership of the paper.

In Fenchester the paper held about even for a time. The new features

which Galpin had put on gained readers, though not as fast as he had

hoped. To offset this, there had been some loss among the more rabid

element of the Deutscher Club, Bausch having spread the report that

the new ownership was anti-German. On his next visit to Fenchester,

to deliver the formal address at a school dedication, Senator Embree

reproached Jeremy for his tactlessness in handling the Prince Henry

message.

“Don’t stick your fighting-jaw out at me, young Robson,” he added

cheerily. “Keep that for your enemies. Now you put in a nice,

good-tempered philosophic little editorial paragraph on the ‘entente

cordiale’ line.” Jeremy began. “I’m da------”

“No, you’re not,” broke in the other. “Listen. Here’s the idea.” And he

outlined an editorial so tactful, so deft, so diplomatic whilst

still independently American in tone, that for sheer pleasure in good

workmanship the editor agreed to adopt it.

“And I’ll square it with Bausch,” said Embree. His smile expanded and

enfolded the other. “Better come hear me speak to-night. I ‘ll have

something to say about The Guardian. Watch the effect of the spread of

the gospel for the next few days.”

The one brief reference to the paper in Senator Embree’s address said

little but implied much. Jeremy was inclined to be disappointed. He

looked for no results. But the following day brought in thirty-seven new

subscriptions, with others trailing in their wake at the rate of a dozen

per day. Furthermore, a batch of letters to the editor urged upon him a

more definite political stand, or invited (in one instance challenged)

him to state his attitude regarding Embree and the new policies frankly.

Since his taking over the paper, politics had been at slack tide in the

State. Jeremy had wisely refrained from committing himself definitely.

All his instinct was for independence of thought and speech. When the

issues were cast, The Guardian would take its stand. But he had reckoned

without that pervasive and acute political self-consciousness of the

Middle West which expects every citizen to be definitely one thing or

the other, and be it promptly! His tax editorials, he found, had already

committed him in the general mind to the radical side. Whoever attacked

the railroads was a Friend of the People. To be sure, Jeremy’s attack

had been addressed to a few specific and flagrant instances; but the

public does not discriminate finely. And Senator Embree’s word-of-mouth

“gospel” had already premised for The Guardian a course which would

considerably have surprised its proprietor.

That keen-scented legal prowler, Judge Selden Dana, became uneasy. Young

Robson, he feared, was getting deep into “Smiling Mart’s” toils.

“It’s time we took a hand,” he warned Montrose Clark. “Don’t you think

I’d better see Robson and have a talk with him?”

“I will do it myself,” said the public utilitarian. “I have had more

experience than you in handling newspaper men.”

“All right. But--easy does it. Remember, this is no A. M. Wymett.”

“If it were, I should leave it entirely in your hands,” retorted the

magnate.

Judge Dana left, reflecting pungently upon his employer’s capacity for

unnecessarily disagreeable speeches.

“If he tries that on Robson he’ll get bumped, or I miss my guess,” he

surmised, and found some satisfaction in the thought.

Nothing, however, could have been farther from the mind of President

Clark. He purposed treating the young newspaper man kindly. Firmly, but

kindly. Even benevolently. Point out to him the error he was committing:

show him that he was unwittingly an enemy to civic interests and

progress which could best be left to those equipped by experience

and under Providence, for handling large affairs: indicate to him,

delicately, wherein his own interests and those of his newspaper were

consonant with the interests of such public benefactors as Montrose

Clark and the P.-U. That was the way to handle a presumably reasonable

young fellow with a property to consider! In his satisfied mind, the

public utilitarian outlined the course of the conversation, with himself

(naturally) as converser and his visitor contributing the antiphony of

grateful assent. Summoning the hand-perfected private secretary, Mr.

Clark entrusted to his reverent care a summons for Mr. Jeremy Robson.

The message was duly transferred to the ’phone. It found the editor

imparting some instructions to his new office boy and loyal personal

heeler, Burton Higman. At the call which informed him that the

Fenchester P.-U. Corporation office was on the ’phone, Jeremy’s mind

reverted to the interview of some months before when Mr. Montrose

Clark had issued his god-like directions to the fuming but helpless

“rippawtah” from The Record, and an unholy light shone in his eye.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is Mr. Garson, Mr. Montrose Clark’s private secretary.”

“Go ahead.”

“Mr. Clark wishes to see you.”

“What about?”

“Is that necessary?” queried the voice, in a tone of startled rebuke.

“It’s usual.”

“He will doubtless explain, himself,” said the voice, after a pause.

“All right,” said Jeremy.

“Three o’clock this afternoon,” specified the great man’s mouthpiece,

and shut off.

Such was the Montrose Clark method with inferiors. Time and the wish

were stated. The place was assumed. A newspaper man was a natural

inferior according to the Montrose Clark measure. The weak point of the

theory, in this instance, was that the other party to the transaction

had not subscribed to it. He returned to his writing. At three-ten the

hand-perfected private secretary was on the ’phone again.

“Mr. Garson speaking. Mr. Clark is waiting.”

“So am I.”

“I don’t understand.” The tone was incredulous. “Put Mr. Clark on the

‘phone,” suggested the editor. “He may be quicker of comprehension.”

The suggestion was not adopted. But in fifteen minutes the secretary,

one button of his black cutaway flagrantly unbuttoned, was being

admitted to the den by Buddy Higman.

“This is most extraordinary, Mr. Robson,” he protested.

“What’s extraordinary in it? Mr. Clark wants to see me on business, I

assume?”

“He does.”

“This is my place of business.”

“This is--you--you are going out of your way to be offensive,” accused

the scandalized visitor.

“Not going out of my way at all. I’m sitting tight. You might have

noticed that yourself.”

“Mr. Clark--that is to say, the Public Utilities Corporation has been a

good friend to The Guardian.”

“It’s been reciprocated in the past,” returned Jeremy dryly.

“In the past? Am I to understand that the attitude of The Guardian

toward the Corporation has changed?”

“If Mr. Wymett was accustomed to run around whenever Mr. Clark chose to

push a button, it has. Them good old days,” said Jeremy enjoyably, “is

gone forever.”

“Mr. Wymett returned courtesy for courtesies.”

“So shall I. When I receive the courtesies.”

“The advertising patronage--”

“Don’t talk to me about advertising,” broke in the editor. “The few

dollars that your concern pays into our cash drawer don’t entitle Mr.

Clark to regard this paper as his errand boy.”

Mr. Garson’s sensitive ear fixed upon the word “few.”

“We are n’t doing much advertising anywhere just now,” he explained with

a conciliating purr. “There will be more soon. Quite soon, in fact. But

there were other ways, you understand, in which Mr. Clark’s friendship

was useful to The Guardian--to Mr. Wymett.”

“For example?”

“News items. Inside information. Advance information, I may say, on

the stock market, for instance, amounting to really advantageous

opportunities.”

“I see!”

“Such information is still--er--available.”

“I see, again. Would Mr. Clark confirm the proposition, do you think?”

The hand-perfected private secretary beamed. His mission, self-inspired,

was prospering famously. “Undoubtedly,” he averred.

“In writing?”

“Mr. Clark’s word is--”

“As good as his bond. Naturally. I was merely thinking of such a letter

not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication.”

A thin, gray veil appeared to draw itself across Mr. Garson’s

countenance, out of which his eyes stared with an aspect of surprise and

fright. This animal had claws! “For publication?” he gasped.

“That’s it. You don’t think he’d do it? Well, he’s wise--to that extent,

anyway. Now, you go back and tell Clark that when we open up for bribes

we’ll take cash--and publish the news in the paper.”

“What did you do to little Eddie Garson?” asked Andrew Galpin, coming in

a moment later. “I just met him in the hall.”

Jeremy explained.

“You’re a rude thing!” grinned the general manager. “What’s your idea in

going up against the P.-U.?”

“Partly personal,” confessed Jeremy. “That puffy Clark thing rasps my

nerves. Anyway, I don’t like the P.-U. methods, public or private, and

I’m not going to stand any bulldozing.”

“Going to fight?”

“If it comes to that.”

“Know what it’ll cost us?”

“No.”

“More than a thousand a year if they pull out all their regular

advertising.”

“It’s tough, Andy. But I don’t know any other way to run a paper.”

“Oh, I’m not kickin’! It ain’t my money. I enjoy it. Maybe he won’t pull

out, unless we go after him first.”

“I’m going after him, though, the next raw deal the P.-U. tries to put

through.”

“Let’s pray they’ll be good, then,” said Galpin.

Upon receipt of the hand-perfected private secretary’s report, though

it was carefully edited to avoid too unbearable offense, Mr. Clark waxed

exceedingly wroth. His first intent was to order all future advertising

in The Guardian stopped. Passion always had the first word with Montrose

Clark, but shrewdness had the last. Shrewdness said, “Wait.” Montrose

Clark could be a good waiter. He waited.

Jeremy Robson did n’t. He published on the following day an editorial,

“Public Utilities and Public Rights,” stating unequivocally The

Guardian’s attitude, which gave deep scandal to President Clark and

inspired the darkest misgivings in the mind of the diplomatic Judge

Dana. The lawyer hurried around to see his principal.

“What did you do or say to young Robson?” he demanded.

Outraged innocence sat blackly on the presidential brow. “Nothing,” he

declared. “He--he sent me an insulting message. He refused to come and

see me. I’ll smash him.”

“Very likely. Meantime he’s smashed our transfer scheme. Or he will

smash it when the time comes.”

“I shall go ahead with it just the same.”

“You’ll be swamped. He’s dug up some tax assessment material on us that

would n’t look pretty in print if he sprung it now. We’ll have to go

slow.”

The President of the P.-U. swallowed his desire for immediate reprisals.

He felt that his prey was sure in the long run. No newspaper could

offend consistently the important people and interests of a community

as The Guardian was doing, and continue to make a living. That way

bankruptcy lay!

Personally, Montrose Clark declared against this young upstart a war of

extermination. He would eliminate the noxious creature. He would make

the town too hot for him.

Vast would have been his rage could he have known that, at the same

time, the editor was meditating much the same design concerning himself.

War to the finish, on both sides. And all, in the first instance,

because of a minor affectation expressed in the pronunciation of the

hybrid word “rippawtah.” Of such petty stuff are human complications

constructed, and thereby the plans of the mighty brought to dust!

CHAPTER V

POLITICS as such had never greatly interested Jeremy Robson. The

trivial and blatant insincerities of party platforms offended a mind

naturally direct and sincere. As he saw the game played at the Capitol,

it seemed to consist mainly in clumsy finesse directed to unprofitable

ends, on the part of the lawmakers, back of whom sat the little tin

gods of finance and commerce, as players sit back of the pieces on a

chessboard. Only, it dawned upon Jeremy, in this game it was the public

that paid the stakes; the public which Jeremy intended that The Guardian

should represent. His platform was “Fair play all around and a chance

for all.”

Being of such mind, he was naturally sympathetic to the fervent and

altruistic radicalism of Senator Embree. Almost before he knew it, he

was committed to the broad, general policies of a new faction whose

immediate object was to capture the party machinery and elect Embree

Governor. Farmers, the more thoughtful class of labor in the industrial

centers, and that floating vote which is always restless of party

control, made up the bulk of “Smiling Mart’s” support. His newspaper

backing was scanty. In Bellair, the chief city of Centralia, The Journal

lent its valuable support to most of his measures and to his general

policies. A score of country journals were thick-and-thin adherents. The

Guardian soon began to be classed with these for loyalty and with the

Bellair Journal for weightiness, in support of the new movement.

Jeremy Robson’s spirited editorial attacks upon the controlled State

administration were now establishing his paper as a gospel to the

fermenting political elements, and had earned the indignant distrust

of those interests which base loud claims to impregnable respectability

upon the ground of returning reliable dividends to their stockholders.

To these he was anathema; a “dangerous radical,” a “half-Socialist,” an

“enemy of American institutions,” a “confessed demagogue,” and the

like impressive and silly characterizations. The Guardian was quoted,

confuted, and abused over the State. It had become a power.

While Jeremy and Andrew Galpin and their lesser aides were struggling

with the various immediate and insistent problems of a newspaper’s

existence and sustenance, and establishing their organ before the public

as genuinely independent in thought and unhampered in the expression of

it, political prestige, which is not acquired in a day by a newspaper

any more than by an individual, steadily accrued to it. Jeremy Robson

had owned The Guardian for a year before he fully realized his political

responsibilities in that what was said editorially in his paper greatly

mattered to some thousands of earnest and groping minds. Not only this.

He himself mattered, individually, as controlling The Guardian. His

visiting list became inconveniently large. People took to dropping in at

the office to discuss, advise, approve, or object, particularly visitors

from the outlying districts who deemed it an all-sufficient introduction

to state that they were “friends of Mart Embree.” Whether through the

direct procurement of that energetic campaigner or otherwise, Jeremy

found that The Guardian was considered to be not only the representative

but the proprietary organ of the new movement. Financially this was an

important asset. Nevertheless, the editor disrelished it. Remembering

A. M. Wymett’s disquisition, he heartily resented his newspaper’s being

regarded as the horn to any one’s phonograph! Moreover, all these calls

ate up time. But that paid for itself in widened acquaintance and a

more sympathetic understanding of the people who, after all, made up the

Commonwealth cf Centralia. He made friends readily with them. They liked

him as soon as they adjusted themselves to the shock of his apparel

which they deemed dudish.

The World-War was still more than a year distant, still but the dream

of such pessimistic and flighty minds as A. M. Wymett’s, when politics

began to boil again in Centralia, and in that steaming stew of policies,

principles, pretenses, ambitions, and chicaneries there simmered,

all unseen, one of the minor but far-spread schemes of the Teutonic

war-lord’s propaganda. It came to Jeremy’s ears through a call from

Magnus Laurens, already being talked of as opposition candidate to

Martin Embree, and already the subject of frank rather than well-judged

comment, in the pages of The Guardian, as representing franchise-holding

control of government. The water-power magnate looked squarer, ruggeder,

more determined and formidable even than on the occasion when Jeremy had

first seen him grimly facing the ridicule of the German societies. He

was nearer sixty than fifty and walked like a football captain, and the

blue eyes under the severe brows, as they met Jeremy’s, were alert and

hard. The editor rose to greet him, holding out his hand.

“I did n’t come here to shake your hand,” said Laurens quietly. “I came

to tell you something.”

Jeremy sat down. “Tell ahead,” said he.

“You’ ve been using my name too freely in your paper.”

“You’re a public character.”

“My name is my own. I’m particular about it. I keep it clean. Your paper

has coupled it up with names that are n’t clean.”

“Did I choose your political associates, Mr. Laurens?” said Jeremy

keenly.

“Political criticism is one thing. Innuendoes of crookedness and graft

are another.”

“We’ll reach no common ground as regards your waterpower operations. I’m

against you there. You’re selling to the people, at a profit, power that

should belong to them.”

“That’s theory. With that I’ve no quarrel. But when your paper moralizes

about franchise-grafting, and hints at bribery, leave me out of it.”

The editor reflected. On Martin Embree’s representations, he had assumed

Laurens’s operations to be founded in corruption. But what proof had he,

after all?

“The Dollard’s Falls Charter--” he began and was cut short.

“The records are open to you. The books of the company are open to you.

I’ll even go that far, if it’s facts you’re after. Or is it hush-money?”

“Which do you think?”

The hard, blue eyes looked at him with a more interested scrutiny.

Magnus Laurens grunted. “Bird of a different feather from Wymett,” he

surmised doubtfully.

“A little.”

“Well, I’m different from Sellers and Corey and Bellows and that lot.

Bear that in mind. If you couple me up with them again, I’ll be back

here for _real_ trouble.”

“Coming back to lick the editor?” asked Jeremy, contemplating the

muscle-packed figure of the other with a smile. “If so, I’ll lay in a

length of lead pipe.”

“Lay in a lawyer and a good one,” advised the visitor grimly. “For I’ll

be after you for criminal libel. No fiddling little damage suits for me.

That’s what I came to tell you.”

“All right. I’ve got it. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Then it’s my turn. You control the Oak Lodge Pulp Company.”

“I have an interest in it.”

“The Guardian buys its print paper from you.”

“Yes.”

“When you came here did you have in mind any--well, exchange of

courtesies, editorial for business consideration, in respect to future

deals?”

“I did not. I don’t do business that way,” retorted Magnus Laurens with

emphasis.

“Did you think that perhaps I was aiming in that direction, with my

comments on you?”

The magnate changed color a little. “I might have suspected something of

the sort.”

“You were wrong.”

“Very well. I was wrong. Anything else?”

“Yes. If I’ll undertake that The Guardian shall say nothing more along

the line which you find objectionable without specific and definite

charges taken from the records, will you acquit me--that is, will you

consider that you’ve scared me sufficiently?”

Magnus Laurens blinked. “I’m not a fool,” he said presently. “Scared

you? You’re no more afraid of me than I am of you.”

“Then you’ve done better than scare me. You’ve convinced me that you

mean what you say. You and I can fight fair.”

“I’ll shake hands now,” said Laurens, and did. “You’re all wrong. You’ve

been misled by that quack, Embree. But I suppose a man can be wrong and

still be straight.”

“Exactly what I’m supposing about you,” retorted Jeremy. “Now, sit down,

Mr. Laurens, and tell me some real political news.”

Laurens drew a chair up opposite the editor. “Do you think you’d print

it?”

“News is The Guardian’s stock in trade.”

“Here’s some, then. A bill is going to be introduced this fall to

Germanize our public schools farther.”

“What’s the substance of it?”

“Making German practically compulsory in the grade schools.”

“They’ll never pass it.”

“Watch them! What leader is going to oppose it? In a governorship

election year?”

“Who will introduce it?”

“Some nonentity. It will have the most powerful radical support. You can

guess from whom.”

“I don’t guess, professionally.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Martin Embree.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Ask him. My sources of information are reliable.”

“Can I get a copy of the bill?”

“Here’s a rough outline of it. It is n’t fully decided on yet, as to

details.”

“Who drew it up?”

“The Reverend Theo Gunst, Henry Dolge, and Professor Brender, of the

German Department at Old Central, on the basis of a plan which Herr

Professor Koerner left when he was here. It’s one of the moves in the

development of ‘Deutschturn.’ Have you ever seen the Germanizing scheme

for Centralia gotten up in the eighties?”

“No. I’ve heard there was such a thing.”

“Colonization up to a certain point. Then the establishment of a Little

Germany through making German the official language of the schools, the

courts, and the Legislature. Peaceful conquest idea.”

“And this bill is a revival of that plan, you think?”

“It has that appearance. Will The Guardian support it?”

“No.”

“Will it oppose it?”

“Who’s doing this interviewing, you or me, Mr. Laurens?” smiled Jeremy.

“Call it an exchange.”

“All right. Yes: we’ll oppose it. What about you?”

“It’s well enough known where I stand.”

“As a private citizen, yes. But as candidate for Governor?”

“I am not a candidate for Governor.”

“Not formally. But you’re going to be. What about this German school

bill then? Will you oppose it?”

“I certainly won’t dodge it. Are you going to pass on this conversation

to ‘Smiling Mart’ Embree?”

“Not if it’s confidential.”

“Then I think this latter part is, for the present. To be quite frank, I

don’t want to meet that issue till I have to.”

“You’re right. It’ll probably beat you.”

“Possibly. But if the issue is once raised, it won’t die out of people’s

minds readily. That’s something.” He paused, then added casually: “By

the way, our first meeting was in a pretty German atmosphere. Do you

recall the meeting where little Miss Ames stood up for the flag? That

took character.”

Jeremy’s face became wistful. “Do you ever hear from her--Miss Ames?”

“Eh? My daughter does. Did you--Why, you were the one that put her on

the golf team, were n’t you! I’d forgotten. You must be a good teacher.”

“She was a good pupil. Never knew when she was beaten.”

“It didn’t happen often enough for her to know, I guess,” laughed the

magnate. “She came out to visit Elizabeth and made a fool of me on my

own course. I owe you a grudge for that, young man! Will you take me out

and show me some of the tricks some time when I’m down here? We’ll

talk politics while we go around, so you can soothe your conscience for

taking the time off.”

“Glad to. Miss Ames and I used to play in the early morning, but I guess

I can take an afternoon off when you come down. By the way, where is

she?”

“In Hamburg, I believe. There was some hint of an engagement.--a

relative of her stepfather’s, I believe. Very advantageous match.”

Jeremy heard the reply “Is that so?” in a tone of flat and polite

simulation of interest, issue upon the air. It was obviously the result

of a mechanical ventriloquism of his own, for he was quite sure that

his lips had been for the moment incapable of speech. Of course he had

always known that it must come. Inevitable with a girl like Marcia. But

hope, though it withers, clings hardily to the last pulsing of secret

life in the young. Even in the heart-emptiness of a long year of

silence--except for the one note delivered by Buddy Higman--Jeremy had

cherished a delusion dear as on the day when he first met her.... He

became aware that Laurens was saying something to him. Politics--that

was it. He had to fix his mind on politics, and though life had abruptly

become sterile of hope and dreams, nevertheless there was a job to

do. For the next twenty minutes, Jeremy passed through an ordeal which

entitled him to a hero’s medal. He forced his aching mind to take in

what Laurens was telling him, and afterward he fashioned from it a

skillful and dispassionate interview.

After Laurens’s departure the editor opened the drawer in his desk which

was always kept locked. Therein were a dozen golf scores--he was still

very young, and his stock of souvenirs had been pathetically scant--her

note and the little photograph. He understood, now, why she had written

him no letter. When she gave him up, she had mapped out her course for

herself. If she were not formally betrothed then, she had determined

upon the step. And having determined, she ended it all, then and there.

It was the honorable way. It was the direct, definite, frank way. It was

the right way. It was Marcia’s way.

He looked yearningly at the photograph. Wonderful how that tiny oblong

of paper, touched with a few flat tints could so evoke the very essence

and fragrance and challenging sweetness of her! She looked out at him,

all soft radiance in the hard radiance of the sunlight which flooded

her, and his fingers, bidden to tear the likeness to fragments and

scatter it--not in resentment but as a sacrificial formality--trembled

and slackened. What harm, after all, in keeping the picture? It meant

nothing--and therein Jeremy Robson lied to his own soul. It meant that

he still clung to his vision, which nothing had blurred. For no other

woman had so much as impinged upon the outskirts of his imagination.

There was neither time nor space for women other than Marcia.

He restored the picture, the note, the prim numerals of the golf

scores--how vividly he could see the full, lithe swing of the young body

vivid with untainted health and vitality as her brassie flicked the

ball cleanly from its turfy lie!--and locked the drawer again. There lay

hopes dead and ideals still unconquerably alive.

*****

Reading the Laurens interview, conspicuously played up, on its merits

as news, Martin Embree felt rise within him dark misgivings as to

his supporter. He was of that type which, in its self-centered mind,

forbodes disloyalty and suspects betrayal in any divergence of opinion

or policy from its own standards. But his smile was as brilliant as

usual, perhaps even more so, when he next met Jeremy.

“Pretty handsome send-off you gave Laurens.”

“Yes. I like him. He’s straight.”

“So’s a snake--when it’s dead. I told you to look out for him.”

“I did,” said the editor good-humoredly. “I don’t think he fooled me

any. Or even tried to.”

“He’s likely to be the man we’ve got to fight for the governorship.”

“We’ll fight him, when the time comes.”

“And meantime you boost him.”

“You’ll never understand the newspaper game, Martin. That was news;

therefore worth printing.”

“I understand this, my boy; that you can’t afford to mix up with Laurens

and his gang.”

“Oh, cheer up, Martin! I don’t intend to. But I can’t take your point

of view in everything, much as I appreciate what you’ve done for the

paper.”

Indeed, Jeremy had always given ungrudging acknowledgment of Embree’s

services to The Guardian. That first boost in circulation through

Embree’s efforts in the Northern Tier had been invaluable. And now,

through his strength in local labor circles, Embree was being of

assistance to Jeremy, in preventing strikes, and allaying trouble in

the press-room. The center of disturbance there was the white-haired,

sharp-tongued Socialist, Nick Milliken.

Most correct in his attitude toward his employer in work hours, Milliken

asserted his independence outside the “shop” by invariably addressing

him as “young feller” and usually reproaching him for “hanging onto a

half-mile-post, like Mart Embree,” instead of coming out fair and square

for Socialism and the millennium. As against him Embree played the big,

stolid German-American foreman Girdner, who had influence among the

men, and who was a political adherent of the Northern Tier Senator’s. On

the whole the internal affairs of the office were satisfactory. Another

connection between Embree and The Guardian office was maintained through

Max Verrall, the Senator’s protégé, who, having made good as circulation

manager, was now handling the paper’s advertising, as sub-head of that

department under the general supervision of Andrew Galpin.

For all favors The Guardian repaid Martin Embree by its loyal and

effectual political support. If the Senator’s friends were not always

acceptable to Jeremy’s somewhat squeamish political standards, at least

his enemies were The Guardian’s enemies. No “conspiracy of silence” on

the part of the press opposed him now. The Guardian paid so much heed to

his utterances that The Record was forced to take them up as a matter

of news. Without this aid, Embree could not have been certain of the

nomination for Governor at that time. Now it was practically assured to

him. The account between him and Jeremy Robson stood fairly balanced to

date.

Jeremy wondered how hard he would take the projected editorial campaign

against the Germanizing of the public schools.

CHAPTER VI

THAT phenomenon of finance which has relegated many a business man to

a pained and bewildered retirement, increase of receipts attended with

a parallel deficit, had marked The Guardian’s first year under the new

control. No question but that The Guardian was a much livelier, newsier,

more influential, and better paper. No question but that the public

appreciated this. The increased and steadily increasing circulation bore

proof. With reluctance the local advertisers also accepted the fact.

Rates had been raised, to the accompaniment of loud protests, which were

largely formal, for the merchants paid the higher charge, and, in many

cases, increased their advertising appropriation. The Guardian was

recognized as a good medium. It was on the way to being recognized as

a necessary medium. When a newspaper reaches that point, its fortune is

made.

But a newspaper is like an automobile or a loaf of bread in this

fundamental respect, that it costs more to make a good than a bad one.

All the special features which Andrew Galpin had put on, mounted up into

money. The staff was more expensive. The telegraphic service cost more.

At no time had swelling revenues quite overtaken rising expenditures.

Galpin, however, who had originally suggested to the new boss A Short

Life and a Merry One as The Guardian’s appropriate motto, was now

optimistic. He confidently believed the paper to be within measurable

distance of assured success.

“But we’re pretty near at the end of our rope--my rope,” Jeremy pointed

out.

“Ay-ah. There’s other ropes dangling around loose. Why not hitch to

one?”

“Borrow?”

“I’ve heard of its being done in business,” replied the general manager

quizzically. “Somebody’s got to help the banks make a living.”

“How much do you think we need?”

Galpin juggled with a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Let’s get enough

while we’re at it. Twenty thousand ought to be the last cent we’ll ever

have to ask for.”

“Can we get that much?” asked the other doubtfully. “On the security of

the plant? Easy.”

Jeremy’s money was in the Fenchester Trust Company, of which Robert

Wanser was president. No difficulty whatsoever was made by him when

Jeremy called. Wanser was an anomaly in national sentiment. The

grandson of a leader of the Young German movement who had found refuge

in this country from the rigorous repression of Germany in ’48, the

son of a major who fought with distinction for the Union through the

Civil War, he remained impregnably Teutonic in thought, sentiment, and

prejudice. He was a large, softish man who suggested in his appearance

a sleek and benignant walrus. He sat back in his chair and listened and

puffed and nodded, and when the applicant was through, made a notation

on a bit of paper. The rest was merely a matter of “Jeremy Robson” at

the bottom of a dated form, and “Do you wish to draw it now or leave

it on deposit, Mr. Robson?” To the borrower it seemed like the nearest

thing to magic since his great-aunt’s bequest.

“And how is the paper getting on, Mr. Robson?” asked Wanser

benevolently.

“First-rate. We can feel it taking hold harder and harder every day.”

“Ah!” Robert Wanser’s “Ah” had just the faintest touch of a medial “c”

in it; just a hint of the guttural, the only relic left in his speech of

a Teutonicism which three generations had failed to Americanize. “That

must be a great satisfaction.”

“It is.”

“And a great responsibility. What a power for good a newspaper may be,

even in a small community such as this! Or for evil. Or for evil,” he

repeated sorrowfully.

Jeremy waited.

“It can radiate enlightenment. Or it can scatter poison. The poison of

class hatred, of political unrest, of racial dissension.” He sighed.

Always for the direct method Jeremy asked, “You think The Guardian is

too radical?”

“A(c)h!” said Robert Wanser. “I have not assumed to criticize.”

“I’m asking for information. That’s the only way I can make the paper

better. By finding out what people think of it.”

“A(c)h, yes! There is much to commend in your paper. Much! But it is not

always quite kindly, is it? Not quite kindly.”

“Probably not. What have you got in mind?”

“Nothing in particular,” disclaimed the banker. “I feel that in our

complicated system there is room for all classes of thought, and that

all of us who are, in a sense, leaders should set the example of a

broad tolerance. The imputation of unworthy motives, for example, can do

nothing but harm. A community such as this should be a brotherhood, all

working for the common good of the town. Don’t you agree with me, Mr.

Robson?”

To agree with so pious a banality would have been easy; was, in fact,

almost a requirement of politeness. But Jeremy was wondering what lay

behind all these words. “I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds all right.

But I don’t get your real meaning.”

Mr. Wanser hastily disclaimed any real meaning, and the interview

proceeded in a mist of steamy generalities contributed by the banker,

of which one alone impressed the editor as embodying the kernel of a

thought.

“You may gain temporary circulation by making enemies, but you lose

support.”

“But a newspaper has got to take sides on public questions,” protested

Jeremy.

“Why so? Why should it not be a lens, to collect and focus facts for the

public’s attention?”

“It should, in the news columns. But editorially?”

“Comment,” said Wanser blandly. “Simple, explanatory, enlightening

comment.”

“It won’t do the business. Take this tax matter--”

“A(c)h! Very unfortunate! Very unfortunate!” murmured the banker.

“Of course it’s unfortunate,” returned Jeremy warmly. “It’s unfortunate

that those best able to pay taxes should get off light at the expense of

those less able to pay.”

“That is not what I meant. These attacks upon property--”

“They’re not attacks on property, when property plays fair. Would a

simple comment have brought old Madam Taylor to time?”

“Perhaps. Why not?”

Jeremy rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would. The facts were

enough just as they stood.” Madam Taylor, the daughter of the dead

statesman who had founded The Guardian, was not only the richest woman

in Fenchester, but was also a highly respected and considerably feared

local institution. Because of that her taxes had not been raised in

thirty years, though her property had quadrupled in value, until The

Guardian shocked the community by running afoul of her.

“You might have so enraged her that she would have left Fenchester

forever,” accused Wanser.

“Small loss, then,” returned Jeremy heatedly, he having been the victim

of the old lady’s spiciest line of commentary, after publication of the

article.

“A(c)h! It would be a misfortune to the town,” said the banker,

thinking, on his part, of the heavy balance in the name of Taylor at his

bank.

“Anyway, Mr. Wanser,” said Jeremy, rising to go, “I’m no neutral. I’m

for or against. And, in reason, The Guardian will be the same. Maybe I’m

wrong. But it’s the only way I know. If it makes enemies, I’m sorry.”

Indeed it had seemed to the young editor that circulation for The

Guardian and enmities for its owner were inevitable concomitants in the

making. Every local question upon which he took sides landed him upon

somebody’s tender toes. Much of the news that he printed--such as had

not been printed for fear of hurting some more or less influential

person’s feelings, before The Guardian espoused the policy that news is

a commodity to which the public is entitled by virtue of its purchase of

the paper--exasperated and even alienated the sympathies of the formerly

favored elements. But it did n’t cause them to stop buying the paper,

because they shrewdly hoped to find equally interesting and annoying

items, later, about their friends. Then there was the matter of special

consideration to the advertising patrons; a principle by which the

mercantile crowd resolutely held, despite Jeremy’s pronunciamento at

the luncheon. At least three fourths of the advertisers in town, Jeremy

estimated, were fitfully concerned either in getting into The Guardian

matters which didn’t belong there, or in keeping out matters which did;

or, if not they, themselves, then their wives, children, or intimate

associates. With respect to all these requests, he cultivated a

determined and expensive habit of saying “No.” Thereby, if the paper

became newsier and scored a more than occasional “beat” on its rival,

The Record, it also became a heavier burden to carry, as the wrath of

the afflicted gathered stormily about its head.

Though local advertisers resented the policy of the paper, they

appreciated its value. That is all that kept them in. Verrall, in his

activities as advertising manager, was constantly reporting evidences of

a hostile spirit. Half of the big stores in town, he said, would knife

The Guardian in a minute if they dared. He represented himself as being

obliged to spend more time in diplomatic soothings than he could well

spare from the routine of his work, and while advocating the utmost

freedom of criticism in public matters, as befitted a follower

of Embree, was mildly deprecatory of what he termed “Mr. Robson’s

hedgehoggishness toward advertisers.” Malicious tongues, moreover, had

been at work among the Germans, who formed an important part of the

local mercantile world, spreading the report that The Guardian was

secretly anti-German. If Mr. Robson could see his way clear to giving

the German-Americans an editorial pat on the back occasionally, it would

aid Verrall considerably in building up his space. Mr. Robson replied

that, as it was, he was publishing a fair amount of German press-stuff,

and he saw no reason to do any editorial soft-sawdering for Mr. Bausch

and his faction.

Foreign advertising, such as the nationally exploited automobiles,

soaps, razors, breakfast foods, and the like was now coming in in

good volume, a most encouraging development, for these big advertisers

exercise a keen discrimination in the matter of newspaper space,

and their general support not only makes a paper “look good” to the

technical eye, but also gives it a certain cachet among lesser concerns.

To the high-grade national businesses The Guardian had made special

appeal by expelling from its columns the fake financial, oil, gold,

rubber, and real-estate dollar-traps, and the quack cure-alls, whose

neighborhood in print the reputable concerns resent.

To offset this, the paper had lost in volume of local advertising.

Several of the large stores had cut down their space, in token of

resentment over the raise in rates, and had restored it only gradually

and not to the full. Barclay & Bull had stayed out for more than six

months. But this helped more than it hurt The Guardian, for their

business showed a marked falling-off and their being obliged to come

back in, rather shamefacedly, was testimony to the paper’s value.

Turnbull Brothers, of The Emporium, the largest of the department

stores, had, however, cut off The Guardian wholly, in consequence of its

reporting a fire in the local freight yard, with the detail that a large

consignment to The Emporium of the bankrupt stock of Putz & Lewin, of

Chicago, was included in the losses. As the arrival of this consignment

was coincident with the announcement of The Emporium’s annual

“Grand Clearance Sale,” the effect was, as their advertising manager

passionately stated to Jeremy, “derogatory as hell.” He demanded

a retraction. The editor politely regretted that facts were both

untractable and unretractable matter to deal with. The Turnbulls

threatened libel. Jeremy told them to go ahead and promised to print

daily accounts of the proceedings. The Turnbulls resorted to violent

names and called off their contract for advertising. Jeremy dismissed

them with his blessing, and told them not to come back until they had

learned the distinction between advertising and news. Thereupon Verrall

bewailed the sad fate of the advertising manager of a paper whose chief

was an irreconcilable stiff-neck, and appealed to Andrew Galpin, but

got nothing by that step other than unsympathetic advice to confine his

troubles to his own department lest a worse thing befall him.

Then there was the case of Aaron Levy, of The Fashion, who, starting on

the proverbial shoestring, was building up a wide low-class trade, and

spreading his gospel through the columns of The Guardian, to the extent

of occasional one-eighth pages. One phase of the Levy trade was a legal

but unsavory installment business, the details of which were frequently

threshed out in petty civil court actions. One of these, with a “human

interest” end, was reported in The Guardian. Mr. Levy promptly called on

Jeremy.

“What you want to do? Ruin my business?” he demanded.

“Is that account true?” asked Jeremy.

“Neffer mind if it’s true. It didn’t have to get printed.”

“Your business ought to be ruined, from what the Court thinks of it.”

“You take my money for advertising it all right,” the protestant pointed

out with justice.

“So we do. We won’t any more. The Guardian won’t carry your installment

business, Mr. Levy.”

“Maybe you’re too good to have my ads in your paper at all!”

“Oh, no. We’ll be glad to have everything but that one line.”

“You can’t run my business for me, don’t you think it!” adjured Mr.

Levy in one emphatic breath, and departed with a righteous conviction of

unmerited injury.

The Fashion’s one-eighth pages no longer graced The Guardian. Too

shrewdly devoted to his trade to stay out entirely, Mr. Levy confined

himself to terse announcements in the briefest and cheapest possible

space. He also helped to spread the evil rumor that young Robson was

“sore on the business men of Fenchester.” Business men there were,

however, shrewd, fair-minded, and far-seeing enough to appreciate The

Guardian’s one-standard policy, even while they deprecated what they

regarded as its abuse of independence. These formed a strong minority of

defenders and supporters. Little by little their ranks were increasing.

Andrew Galpin’s optimism, and the debt which represented it, seemed

fairly justified as the election of the fall of 1913 drew near.

Already The Guardian had far outstripped The Record in circulation and

in advertising revenue. The rival paper was being hard pressed to make

a respectable showing, and had adopted a decidedly acidulous tone toward

Jeremy and his publication, letting no opportunity pass to impugn its

motives and jeer at its principles. Ever ready for a fight, Jeremy was

for joining issue on the editorial page, but Galpin’s wiser counsel

withheld him.

“Nobody cares for newspaper squabbles but newspaper men,” said that

sage. “We’re not making a newspaper for newspaper men. We’re making a

newspaper for Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises. And we’re

getting ’em!”

But Jeremy Robson was making a newspaper to meet another, more

demanding, more changeful standard which was yet in a great measure the

same. He was making a newspaper for Jeremy Robson; for Jeremy Robson,

who, with a surprised and humble and hungry mind, was being educated by

that very newspaper which he himself was making. More and more Jeremy

Robson, editor of The Guardian, was identifying himself in mind and

spirit with Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises, readers and

followers of The Guardian. Because of that fellowship, because of the

implied link of faith and trust that had grown up, impalpable, between

them, evidenced in hundreds of letters to and scores of calls upon “the

editor,” there had been established standards to which The Guardian was

inviolably if tacitly committed. There were things which The Guardian

might not do. There were things which, when the time came, it might not

refrain from doing. An implicit faith was pledged. So and not otherwise

does a newspaper become an institution.

Yet The Guardian was Jeremy’s very own. He felt for it the proprietary

pride and interest of a man with a growing business and a growing

influence to wield, and, added to that the affection of a child for a

toy machine--which actually goes! He coddled his paper and petted it,

and treated it, when he could, to new and better equipment, and awoke

one day to the unpleasant realization that the editorials which he so

enjoyed writing, and the growing, widening response to which constituted

his most satisfactory reward, were physically a blotch and a blur and

an affront to the staggering and baffled eye. The Guardian needed a new

dress and needed it badly!

Now the garmenture of a newspaper is of a costliness to make Paquin,

Caillot, and their Parisian congeners of the golden needle appear like

unto ragpickers, when the bills come in. Jeremy bought The Guardian a

new dress of type. It made a hideous hole, a chasm, an abyss in the loan

negotiated from the Trust Company. But the paper became a festival to

the proud eye of its owner. Galpin helped salve his chief’s conscience

by agreeing that they would have had to do it sooner or later anyway.

Well advised of the loan, the status of the paper’s finances, and the

new plunge, Montrose Clark and his legal satellite, Judge Dana, held

consultation. Now, they decided, was the providentially appointed time

for trying out the transfer ordinance in the City Council. The Guardian,

whose opposition they had feared, had put itself in a position where it

must “be good.”

“That young cub,” said Montrose Clark confidently, “will have to come

into line.”

“With management. With careful management,” amended Judge Dana.

“Anyway!” returned the public utilitarian. “He’ll need every cent he

can get and when he sees five or six hundred dollars as his share of our

advertising campaign of education, with more to follow, he’ll take his

orders like the others. I’ll send for him in a day or two.”

“What, again?” said Judge Dana.

The puffy jowl of Montrose Clark deepened in color. “I shall not

tolerate any more of his impudence,” he declared. “He will come when

sent for or--”

“Now, Mr. Clark, this is a case for diplomacy.”

“For you, you mean, Dana.”

“What do you employ me for?” soothed the lawyer. “Just you have a copy

of the ordinance drawn up. Tell Garson to get up the advertising figures

and give them to me. I’ll talk to young Mr. Robson.”

The magnate assented, though with an ill grace. “Will you take up the

matter of your candidacy with him at the same time?”

Matters were so shaping themselves in politics, that with the figure of

Martin Embree looming and the probability of a strong radical vote in

the Legislature, the P.-U. and its allied traction interests in the

State deemed it advisable to place a safe representative on the Court

of Appeals bench, where much may be done by “interpretation” to offset

destructive legislation. Dana had been selected as the man. In his early

days the Judge had weathered, with difficulty and not without damage to

his reputation, two or three legal tempests, one of which had all but

caused his disbarment. Had not Montrose Clark, already finding him

valuable as a clever quasher of damage suits in their early stages,

employed his influence, the Judge would have ceased to ornament the

legal profession. He had since gone far to rehabilitate himself in the

eyes of the public, by sticking close to high-class, quiet (not to say

secret) corporation work. But the better men of his own profession,

while recognizing his abilities, were still suspicious of him, though

not to the point where any protest was likely to be made in the face of

such powerful interests as were backing him.

Judge Dana pondered his patron’s question. “That depends on how he takes

the transfer plan,” he replied.

“You gave me advice about him,” said Montrose Clark rather maliciously;

“to handle him with gloves. You see how it came out. Now I’ll give you

some in return. Put the screws on the young fool!”

“Not my way. And not his description. He’s got a lot to learn. I’m going

there as his teacher. I would n’t be, if he was a fool.”

Channels of communication bring information (and even more

misinformation) from many sources into an editor’s office. Through

one of these Jeremy had learned of the projected transfer plan’s

recrudescence. Therefore he was prepared when Judge Dana, having called

by appointment, stated the case flatly.

“We want your support,” he said.

“This is a pretty raw deal, Judge Dana,” remarked Jeremy.

The lawyer’s thin and solemn face did not alter its expression of bland

disinterestedness. “Not if looked at in the right light.”

“What is the right light?”

“The P.-U. needs the new arrangement in order to perfect its service to

the public. The greatest good to the greatest number.”

“Number One,” suggested Jeremy. “Mr. Montrose Clark.”

“Setting aside any personal prejudice in the matter, what have you

against the Public Utilities Corporation?”

“It does n’t play fair. It is always begging for special privileges and

then establishing them as rights after it has got them.”

The lawyer reflected that this theory, presented and amplified

editorially in The Guardian, would be unpleasantly difficult to refute.

“After all, it performs a public service,” he pointed out, a bit lamely.

“The public could do it for itself better and cheaper.”

“That’s Embreeism. It’s Socialism.”

“Call it what you like. It’s common sense.”

“Let me advise you, in the friendliest spirit, not to take up any such

scatter-brained theories in your paper. They’d wreck it.”

“That may come later. I’ll tell you this now, Judge. We won’t support

the transfer plan.”

“I never thought you would,” said the lawyer calmly. “What’s the idea of

this call, then?”

“To suggest that you keep your hands off and let us fight it out in

Council.”

Jeremy laughed outright. “You don’t ask me to hold the easy mark while

you go through his pockets. Only to stand by and not interfere.”

Judge Dana grinned. “I don’t care much for the style of your metaphor,”

he confessed.

“Judge, I’m afraid it’s no go. You can easily bulldoze or bribe the

Council, if we keep our hands off.”

“Fair words, my boy! Fair words! Has n’t The Guardian ever done any

bulldozing?”

“Expect it has--in a good cause.”

“This is a good cause. It’s going to be good for you as well as us--and

the public.”

“As how?” queried Jeremy.

“Our plan is to present the new system to the public through a series of

advertisements. Education, you understand. The modern way: through the

press. Would you like to see the outline?”

“Come to the point. What’s the amount?”

Where the hand-perfected Garson would have seen hope in the question,

the warier lawyer scented danger to his plans. Nevertheless he went

ahead. “Five hundred, minimum. Perhaps as high as a thousand, if the

public is slow to learn. Our total advertising appropriation this year,”

stated Judge Dana with great deliberation, “will run to five thousand

dollars. There is no reason why The Guardian should not get a half of

it. At least a half.”

“Did Mr. Clark ever get the message that I sent him by Garson, as to

bribes?”

“Bribes?” The lawyer looked properly startled. “I don’t know. I doubt

it.”

“I sent word to Clark that when I got ready to take bribes, I’d take

them direct, in the form of cash.”

“But I’m not offering to bribe you or The Guardian,” protested the

other. “It’s a matter of simple business. We institute an advertising

campaign in a newspaper. We don’t ask it to advocate our measures; to a

finicking mind that might seem to be a form of bribery. No; we only ask

that, having published our advertising and accepted us as customers, the

paper refrain from rendering the service we’ve paid for useless or worse

than useless, by attacking our arguments editorially. Is n’t that fair

and reasonable?” pleaded the lawyer, with a plausible gesture of laying

the matter out for equitable judgment.

Jeremy passed the argument. “Do you think Garson ever delivered my

message?”

“I should think it unlikely,” returned the other, taken slightly aback.

“Afraid?”

“Politic.”

“The same thing, usually. Are you afraid of Montrose Clark?”

The lawyer reddened. “I came here as one gentleman to another--”

“With an offer of hush-money,” broke in the editor. “Come, Judge; you

and I are down to hard-pan. We can dispense with bluff. However, if you

don’t like the word ‘afraid’--I don’t like it much, myself, but that’s

because there are so many things I’m trying not to be afraid of--I’ll

take it back. Now; will you take my message to Clark, as Garson would

n’t?”

“No; I will not.”

“Then I’ll have to write it to him. Or, I might print it in The

Guardian, in the form of an open letter following this interview.”

“This is a confidential visit,” cried the lawyer, shocked clean out of

his professional calm.

“You’ve got me there,” admitted the other. “I’ve got to play square if I

put up the bluff, have n’t I, Judge? Even with you.”

“I’m damned if I understand you, young man.”

“Cheer up. We’ve got many long years to learn all about each other in.”

“You think The Guardian will last?” Dana could not resist the temptation

to impart the dig.

“It’ll be remembered, if it doesn’t,” promised its editor. “Won’t you

reconsider the matter of that message, Judge? You can tone it down, you

know, and temper it to the dignity of the little great man, whereas if I

write him--”

“I’ll do it,” declared Dana suddenly. “And I won’t tone it down.”

“And you’ll enjoy it,” added Jeremy with a grin, which met an unexpected

response. The two men understood each other. In a certain complementary

sense they were even sympathetic to each other.

Devastating was the wrath of Montrose Clark upon receipt of Judge Dana’s

report, wholly unexpurgated. He fumed, first redly, then purply, as if

some strange chemical reaction were taking place inside him; and from

the exhalations of that turmoil, there crystallized a most unwise

decision. Montrose Clark decided upon reprisals with his enemy’s own

weapon. He had Garson write several personal attacks upon Jeremy Robson,

and intimidated Farley into publishing them in The Record, at special

advertising rates, a procedure decidedly painful to Farley’s views of

professional ethics and journalistic fellowship. Jeremy retorted with

a series of hasty but rather brilliant imaginary interviews with one

“President Puff,” which all but drove the subject of them into an

apoplexy, and were a source of joy to the ungodly, albeit discreetly

subdued as to expression, for the P.-U. head was a man of power in

many directions. At this point the Church rushed into the breach in the

person of the Reverend Mr. Merserole, Montrose Clark’s rector, and the

benefidary of a five thousand dollar gift to the fund of the Nicklin

Avenue Church only a week previous. Both the high-minded Mr. Clark and

the high-church rector would have been profoundly and quite honestly

shocked at the suggestion that there was the faintest element of

financial influence (in impious circles called “graft”) in what

followed. But the reverend gentleman preached an able and severe sermon

upon the topic “Poisoned Pens,” in which a certain type of reckless,

demagogic, passion-inciting, self-seeking, conscienceless journalism

was lifted up to public reprobation in a pillar of fiery invective. The

Guardian violated all precedent by publishing the livelier portions of

the sermon under the caption, “Whom can the Reverend Gentleman Mean?”

and followed this up with a report on the Clark contribution, paralleled

with further excerpts from the more spiritual and lofty portions of the

sermon, headed with the text, “Where your treasure is, there will your

heart be also.” The Reverend Mr. Merserole was pained and annoyed for

the remainder of the week by a steady influx of marked copies of

The Guardian. He was stimulated to a holy but helpless wrath by the

subsequent discovery that he, the impeccable pastor of the fashionable

Nicklin Avenue Church, had been impiously dubbed “the Nickle-in-the-Slot

rector.” This ribaldry he ascribed to Jeremy Robson’s unprofessional

wit, wherein he was wrong. As a matter of fact, it was a flash from the

quaint mind of Eli Wade, the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. But Jeremy had earned

another implacable enemy.

The Guardian did not get its share of the $500-or-more educational

advertising from the P.-U. Indeed, there was no educational advertising.

The transfer issue was passed, for the time, rather than venture into

the open where, as Judge Dana observed, “The Guardian was waiting for

it with a fish-horn and a brick”; and the P.-U.’s legal lights set

about drafting a blanket franchise for the consideration of some future

legislature, which should enable the corporation to do about what it

pleased without reference to dubious councils or pestilent journalistic

demagogues.

CHAPTER VII

CRYSTALLIZING politics left but two figures in the field for the

campaign of 1913. That Martin Embree would carry the radical banner was

a foregone conclusion. Magnus Laurens was logically the man to oppose

him. To the Clark-Wanser-Dana wing of the party, who owned the then

Governor, a weak-kneed, feeble-spirited, oratorical creature, Laurens

was distasteful. He was far more prone to give orders than to take them.

But on fundamental issues he was “right”; a sound conservative, reliably

hostile to all the quasi-socialistic theories threatening the control

of the State. Moreover his personal and political rectitude was beyond

suspicion. Like or dislike him, he was the only man in sight with a

chance of beating Embree.

Meantime “Deutschtum,” that world-wide, subterranean propaganda of

German influence, German culture, German hopes and ambitions and future

dominations which had for a quarter of a century established itself

reproductively as the ichneumon parasite affixes its eggs to the body

of the helpless host which, later, their brood will prey upon and

destroy--Deutschtum was scheming out the peaceable and subtle conquest

of Centralia through capture of the minds of the coming generations of

citizens. The Cultural Language Bill was quite harmless in appearance,

so astutely had it been drawn. Under pretense of giving parents

of public school pupils the right to secure for their children, by

petition, instruction in foreign languages, it actually established

German as a “preferred study” with the heaviest ratio of credits, and,

in the advanced schools, as practically a compulsory subject. This meant

the addition of some four to five hundred teachers of German throughout

the State, every one of whom would be a propagandist of Deutschtum. As

a side issue, the determination of the textbooks on European history was

left to the German staff. The school boards of the State being already

pretty well Teutonized, it was evident that, should the bill pass,

history as taught in the Centralia school system would be censored

agreeably to the purposes of His Imperial Majesty Wilhelm of Germany.

Originally it was intended to present the measure, backed by a

formidable list of names from the academic world, with a sprinkling

of “prominent citizens,” and push it quietly through as a purely

educational and technical matter into which, the professionals and

professors having said their say in advocacy, the public need not

trouble itself to examine. Leave these esoteric matters to the

specialists! The list of endorsers was prepared. It was comprehensive,

as regards the colleges and schools, the pedagogic element being

influenced by the natural academic sympathy for the German educational

system which honors scholarship so highly. Prominent citizens lent their

names as prominent citizens always will when a petition not affecting

their own pockets (though it may affect the national integrity of their

country) is presented. A committee, graced by the presence of Emil

Bausch, Professor Brender, head of the German Department of the local

university, Professor Rappelje, of the Economics Department, Judge

Dana, the Reverend Mr. Merserole, Farley of The Record, and others, with

Robert Wanser as chairman, made a formal appearance as sponsors. It was

a solemn, dull, and impressive occasion, and The Guardian representative

sent to report it almost yawned his head off. He sadly envied his boss

whom he had met coming out of the office juggling two white and gleaming

golf-balls. He wished he owned a paper and could devote a morning to

pure sport whenever so minded!

The golf-balls did not indicate unmingled recreation for the boss of The

Guardian. He was responding to a telephone challenge for a match with

Magnus Laurens. Since the agreement in the editor’s den, the water-power

magnate had made rather a habit of dropping in upon Jeremy when he

came to Fenchester. He would stretch his powerful figure in Jeremy’s

easy-chair, open the friendly hostilities by proposing to him that,

since he believed in other people’s property being taken over for the

public good, he should deliver The Guardian to Nick Milliken and

the real Socialists; shrewdly discuss politics and the practitioners

thereof; and invariably wind up on the main interest which the two men

held in common, the Americanization of their hybrid State.

Even at its best, Laurens’s golf-game was not redoubtable to a player of

Jeremy’s caliber. On this particular morning it was far from its best.

Turning to his opponent after a flagrant flub on the ninth green, the

older man said: “My mind isn’t on the game to-day. Let’s get an early

lunch, and talk.” As soon as they were seated at the table, he opened up

the subject.

“You’re against me, of course, in the campaign.”

“Certainly. We’re for Embree.”

“That’s all right. What I’m going to say does n’t contemplate any

possibility of your changing. Have you read the Cultural Language Bill?”

“No. I’ve sent a man up to cover the hearing.”

“Why did n’t you read it?”

“I understood it was n’t of any special importance.”

“From whom? Embree? Never mind,” added Laurens, smiling. “You need n’t

answer. Remember our conversation about Deutschtum in the schools?”

“Yes.”

“This is it.”

“As this bill was explained to me, it is n’t at all the measure you

described in outline.”

“Not on the surface. They’ve changed it. But it’s even worse in intent.”

“You’ve made a study of it?”

“They asked me to sign it. I refused.”

“Who asked you?”

“In confidence, Robert Wanser.”

“Why, he was one of the leaders in the movement for your nomination.”

“As he took pains to remind me.”

“Is this likely to be made a political issue?”

“I don’t think so. Not in the party sense. The German crowd want to push

the bill through as quietly as possible.”

“That’s natural. Once they get their system fastened on the schools--”

“It’s there to stay.”

“I guess I’ll get back to the office, Mr. Laurens. I want to get in

touch with our reporter at the hearing.” Olin, the reporter in question,

abruptly ceased yawning his head off upon receipt of instructions to

follow closely the representations made for the bill. His story,

edited by Jeremy himself with illuminating side touches, turned that

innocent-seeming measure inside out and revealed some interesting

phenomena on the inner side. One remark of Magnus Laurens--“I got my

first schooling in the Corner School-House and I want to see it stay

as American as it was in my day”--stuck in Jeremy’s mind. Out of it he

constructed an editorial on the Corner School-House as the keystone

of Americanism, never for an instant foreboding that the phrase would

become the catchword of a bitter campaign. The first effect of the

editorial was to bring Embree around to the Club at dinner-time to find

Jeremy.

“What on earth did you make that break for?” cried the harassed

statesman.

“Break? It wasn’t a break. That bill means more than you think.”

“It means nothing serious. Or it would n’t have, if you had n’t made an

issue of it. Now, the Lord knows what we’re in for!”

“An open discussion is my guess. That was the object of the editorial.”

“Oh, you’ll get that! If that were all--or half!”

“We have n’t killed the bill, have we?” asked the editor hopefully.

“No. But it will have to be cut and pruned a good deal, to meet

arguments.”

“Will that hurt your feelings?”

“I care nothing about the bill. It’s only a sop to the harmless vanity

of the Germans. But you’ve got them down on you again. And they blame me

for it.”

“_Do_ they! Why?”

The Senator laughed in a half-embarrassed way. “Well, you know, Jem, I’m

credited with having some influence with The Guardian. I wish I had half

I’m credited with.”

“You mean that you ‘re supposed to control the paper’s policies.”

“Don’t get disturbed over it. I can’t help it.”

“Nor can I, apparently,” returned the editor, frowning. “People

absolutely refuse to believe that a man is responsible for his own

paper--except when there’s something to kick on.”

“What are you going to do now about the bill?”

“Let it simmer. Take another shot at it when it comes up again.”

“Do you want to lose me the election?”

“Come out on the other side if you want to, Martin.”

“I am for the bill.”

“Make a speech and say so, then. We’ll report you in full, and give

you a leading editorial courteously regretting that so brilliant and

far-seeing and sturdily American a statesman should be in error on this

one point.”

An answering smile came into Martin Embree’s expressive face. “Go a

little light on the sturdy American feature.”

“But you are that, are n’t you?”

“Of course I am. Just on this bill, though, I don’t care to ram it down

the Germans’ throats.”

“You’ll never teach me politics, Mart,” sighed the other. “I’m too

single-barreled and one-ideaed.”

“One-eyed, my boy, one-eyed. Try to see the thing from the other

fellow’s point of view.”

“Your point of view at present is that I ‘ve gone astray from your good

influence. Is that it?”

“There are other influences, Jem.” The Senator’s smile was broad and

golden as a bar of sunlight. “I hear you were out at the swell Country

Club this morning with Magnus Laurens.”

“Your information is O.K.”

“Did he talk to you about this bill?”

“He did.”

“Is he against it?”

“He is. Refused to sign the memorial.”

Embree’s face grew heavy and thoughtful. “Did he so! I wonder if we

could get him on record?”

“Magnus Laurens is n’t likely to dodge an issue.”

“He’s a queer associate for the editor of The Guardian.”

“I pick my own associates,” retorted Jeremy shortly. “Or let them pick

you. Until they get ready to drop you again. That’s the way with those

fellows that have got too much money.”

“He isn’t likely to buy me away, Martin,” replied Jeremy, recovering his

temper.

“I’m not worrying.” The Embree smile was on duty again. “What bothers me

is what the Germans will do to you for to-day’s paper.”

What the Germans did to Jeremy Robson was, in the terse slang of

the day, a plenty. The German press, religious and lay, attacked The

Guardian as an exponent of a narrow and blighting Know-Nothingism. One

or two small German organizations passed high-sounding resolutions of

reprehension. There was a flood of letters and enough “stop-the-paper”

orders to afflict the soul of the much-tried Verrall. The most definite

response came from Bernard Stockmuller, the jeweler, a generous

advertising patron of The Guardian. On the morning following the hearing

on the bill he met Jeremy on the street and stopped him.

“Vot you got against the Chermans, Mr. Robson?” he demanded truculently.

“Not a thing in the world.”

“Emil Bausch told alretty how you turned down Prinds Henry’s ledder.”

“I did not.”

“He says you are a Cherman-hater. If you are a Cher-man-hater,”

continued the irate jeweler, overriding the other’s protest, “I guess a

Cherman’s money ain’t good enough for you. My advertising you don’d get

any more.”

“I don’t need it on those terms,” replied the owner of The Guardian.

“And you may tell Mr. Bausch from me that he lies.”

No other advertiser actually deserted the paper, though Verrall reported

much ill-feeling among the German mercantile element. The sturdy jeweler

alone was enough a man of principle to make his nationalism superior to

his business.

“Is it worth while?” was the argument posed by Embree, a fortnight

later when the bill, in re-amended form, was coming up again, and Jeremy

was whetting his pen for another tilt at it. “You’ve done the job. Can’t

you drop it now?”

“Have we done the job, though?”

“Surely. Look at the bill now. Practically everything you objected to is

out. I’ll guarantee it harmless, myself.”

What he said was in a sense true. Practically every point made in The

Guardian had been speciously met in the new draft of the bill. But, in

essence, it remained the same, an instrument of Deutschtum. Jeremy did

not look at the amended measure more than to give it a hasty glance. He

accepted it on the Honorable Martin Embree’s word; and as he did so he

was conscious deep within himself that he was dodging responsibility;

that he really did not want to know too much about the new form.

The Stockmuller incident had disturbed him, for he liked the little,

impetuous jeweler. Then, too, the accusation that he could endure with

the least equanimity was that of narrow-mindedness. Men whose sound

Americanism was as trustworthy as their technical judgment had endorsed

the measure. The Guardian went off guard. The bill became a law.

Unforeseen concomitants marked its political course. Embree, playing

expert politics, so arranged matters that Magnus Laurens was challenged

repeatedly on the “Corner School-House” issue. It did not lie within

Laurens’s vigorous and frank nature to refrain from declaring any

principle which he held. He replied in speeches which, slightly and

cleverly distorted by the trained German-language press, gave profound

and bitter offense to the German-Americans, even the best of them.

Taking up the controversy at the politically effective moment, Embree

pushed it, making the most of his adversary’s alleged prejudice and

narrowness, particularly in the foreign-born districts. Long before the

election it was evident that the school-house slogan alone would beat

Laurens. He was heavily defeated. That morning’s golf with Jeremy did

it.

In honor, The Guardian had refrained from making use of the “Corner

School-House” issue against Laurens. Jeremy at least would not play the

turncoat. He persuaded himself that, in resisting Embree’s arguments for

a strategic change of base, he was doing all that could be required

of him. Nevertheless, it was with an inner qualm that he met Magnus

Laurens, a week after the election, their first interview since the

golf-game.

“Well, Mr. Laurens,” he said, “you made a good fight. We can’t all win.”

“But some of us can stand by our colors even if we lose,” said the

downright Laurens, and passed on.

“Can’t stand defeat,” said Jeremy to himself.

But the explanation did not satisfy his inner self. Deep down he was

conscious of his first surrender.

CHAPTER VIII

SIX weeks after Martin Embree’s triumphant election to the

governorship, the owner of The Guardian visited the Fenchester Trust

Company for the formality of renewing his note. He was referred to

President Robert Wanser. More walrus-like than ever, the president of

the institution looked this morning as if he might have eaten a fish

that did n’t quite agree with him. Jeremy stated his errand. Mr. Wanser

ruminated.

“Difficulties have arisen,” he presently announced. “What difficulties?”

asked Jeremy, startled.

“The Trust Company does not see its way to renewing your note at this

time, Mr. Robson.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have not said that anything is wrong. It is merely a matter of

business policy. The loan is a heavy one.”

“It is well secured.”

“I do not question that.”

“The paper has turned the corner. We are making money to-day.”

“To-day--you are.”

“And we shall make more from now on.”

“A(c)h!” observed the banker with his buried guttural. “That is

prophecy.”

“Based on facts and figures. I can show them to you.”

“No need.”

Jeremy reflected, with an unpleasant sensation of being spied upon,

that probably the local banks knew as much of the financial side of his

business as he himself did; perhaps more.

“Do you consider The Guardian weaker security than it was?” he inquired.

“I have not said so,” replied the impassive walrus.

“You have n’t said anything. Do you intend to, or am I wasting my time?”

Jeremy arose, looking at the financier with a lively eye. This was not

at all what Wanser desired. He intended to read this young sprig of

journalism an impressive and costly lesson, after first reducing him to

a condition of affliction suitable for the punitive exercise. It annoyed

him to find that Jeremy did not reduce; on the contrary, that he was

likely to escape uninstructed in that discipline to which he, Wanser,

was leading by gradual stages. Forced to a shorter cut he said

oracularly:

“A newspaper’s best asset is its friends.”

The editor’s regard continued intent.

“Its heaviest liability is enemies.”

Still no response from the beneficiary of these pearls of wisdom.

“A newspaper is on the down-grade when it makes unfair and prejudiced

attacks upon--upon any class of people.”

“Talk plain, Mr. Wanser. You mean the Germans.”

The walrus, startled by this abruptness, began to bark. “That’s what

I mean. That’s exactly what I mean. You’ve got a grudge against the

Germans.”

“Not I.”

“You have. It proves itself. The Germans are the best citizens in the

State.”

Jeremy laughed not quite pleasantly. “I was betting myself you’d say

that next.”

“Say what? I don’t understand you.”

“Every German-American I’ve ever talked with tells me sooner or later

that the German-Americans are the solidest or the best or the most

representative citizens in the country. If not the most modest,” added

he maliciously.

Like most retorts inspired by annoyance it was a tactless speech. The

walrus bristled. “You see!” he growled. “There’s your prejudice.”

“No prejudice at all. The Germans considered as people are all very

well. I like them and respect them. But there are other people in

America, you know,--Americans, for instance.”

“We all know how you feel. We all know why you fought our school bill.”

“I did n’t fight it. I let up on it.”

“You let up when you were afraid to go on,” taunted the other.

Jeremy’s face flamed. “You’re a--” he began, and stopped short,

swallowing hard. “You’re right,” he said with quiet bitterness. “I was a

quitter. It serves me right that you should be the second man to tell me

so.”

“You quit too late.” The walrus was enjoying himself now.

“Evidently. All right, Mr. Wanser. The note will be paid when due. At

least I’m glad we understand each other.”

The walrus, briefly meditant upon this, did n’t like it. “Don’t be so

sure you understand it all,” was his parting word, by which he really

meant that he failed to understand Jeremy. There was a large leaven of

timidity in his imposing bulk.

To Andrew Galpin the interview as detailed by his boss proved no great

surprise. “Dutch Bob”--thus he irreverently dubbed Fenchester’s leading

banker--“is sore on two counts. You mussed up his bill. That’s the first

and worst. The other is our support of Mart Embree.”

“But Embree and Wanser worked for the bill together.”

“Ay-ah. That’s all right. Wanser is all for Embree when he’s a German

booster. He’s all against him when he’s a radical. It’s one of the

twists of politics.”

“Why are they so hot about this school business anyway? It almost

makes me believe that Wymett and Laurens are right in their Deutschtum

theory.”

“Don’t you go seeing ghosts, Boss,” advised the general manager,

good-humoredly.

“Then you don’t take any stock in the notion.”

“About the Germans? Oh, I don’t know. Let ’em play with their little

Dutch toys. I guess we’re a big enough country to absorb all the

sauerkraut and Wienerwursts they can put into our system. What’s the use

of being cranky about it? It only gets the paper in wrong.”

“We’re certainly in wrong with Wanser. And now we’re out. Got twenty

thousand dollars up your sleeve, Andy?”

“No. I’ve spent my week’s salary,” answered the other with a grin. “The

Drovers’ Bank would be my best guess.”

To the Drovers’ Bank went the owner of the Fenches-ter Guardian, a daily

with a rapidly rising circulation of eleven thousand, an increasing

advertising patronage, and a fair plant. He was courteously received by

the president of the institution, an old, glossy, and important looking

nonentity named Warrington. Mr. Warrington listened with close

attention, made some thoughtful figures on a blotter, and requested Mr.

Robson to return that afternoon when a positive answer would be given.

But Mr. Warrington thought--he was quite of the opinion--he confidently

believed--that there would be no difficulty.

“There’s one thing that worries me, Boss,” commented Andrew Galpin as

the pair sat absorbing coffee and pie into their systems at a five-cent,

time-saving lunch-counter near the office.

“Pass me the sugar--and the worry,” requested Jeremy.

“Why should Wanser close down just at this time?”

“Why not?”

“Well, safely secured loans of twenty thousand dollars aren’t the kind

of business a bank chucks to another bank.”

“Did n’t I indicate to you that his loyal German heart was sore?”

“Why was n’t it sore last summer, when the bill was up?”

“Do you think somebody’s been stirring him up to go after us?”

“More likely he’s got some reason to think we’re up against it.”

“Hoots! We were never in such good shape.”

“That’s our view. I’m wondering if, maybe, Bausch and his lot are

putting up some kind of a game.”

“What kind of a game can they be putting up?”

“I’d have to understand German to read their minds. Maybe they’ll stir

up the advertisers against us. Like Stockmuller.”

“Any local advertiser that thinks he can do business without The

Guardian,” stated the owner arrogantly, “is suffering from an aggravated

form of fool-in-the-head.”

“That’s good doctrine. If only you can make ’em believe it.”

“They believe it all right.”

“Say, Boss. Why not get Mart Embree’s view on it?”’

“Good idea.”

Jeremy went to the Governor-elect. “What did you expect?” asked that

acute commentator on men and events. “Can’t you understand that you

insulted every good German-American by attacking them on the point

where their pride is most involved, the superiority of their educational

system?”

“Allowing that, is this just a belated revenge on Wanser’s part?”

“No. It’s business.”

“To drop $1400 a year interest on a good note?”

“It would have cost the Trust Company more than that to carry you.”

“I don’t get the point, Martin.”

“Deutscher Club account. Emil Bausch’s account. Henry Vogt. Arndt &

Niebuhr. Stockmuller--Have I said enough?”

“They would have withdrawn? Are they as sore as that?”

“One of these days you’ll realize the truth of what I told you about

committing hara-kiri, Jem. There’s only one safe way with the Germans.

Let them alone and they’ll let you alone.”

“Oh! Will they! That shows how one-sidedly you look at it. They’ve begun

flooding the office already with their press-work for the winter Singing

Society festival.”

“Perfectly harmless. You certainly can’t see anything objectionable in

that.”

“No; I can’t,” admitted Jeremy.

“Run a lot of it, then. It costs nothing, and it will help square you

for the school bill break.”

Which Jeremy found good advice and resolved to follow. He said as much

and was approved as one coming to his senses after regrettable errancy.

“How much pull do you think the Deutscher Club crowd have with the

Drovers’ Bank?” asked Jeremy.

“Not so much. If you do have difficulty there, let me know. I could

probably fix you up in some of the out-of-town banks.”

The Drovers’ Bank made no difficulty. Mr. Warrington was most amenable

when Jeremy returned. This helped to reassure the borrower that no

financial plot threatened his newspaper. He would have felt less happy

had he known that the interval between his visits had been utilized by

Mr. Warrington to pay a call of consultation upon a certain florid and

self-important gentleman, no lover of The Guardian or its editor since

he had suffered indignities of print as “President Puff” from Jeremy’s

satiric and not always well-advised pen.

“Let him have it,” directed the public utilitarian. “Three months’

note.”

Montrose Clark smiled puffily upon Judge Selden Dana later at the club.

“I thought he would come around to us,” he stated. “What will you do

now?” asked the lawyer.

“Wait,” replied the magnate.

Which might have been regarded either as direction, threat, or

declaration of intent, and partook of the nature of all three.

CHAPTER IX

BUDDY HIGMAN, prosperous in a new blue-and-yellow mackinaw (Christmas),

a pair of fur mittens (New Year’s), and high snow-boots (accumulated

savings), entered the Fenchester Post-Office with the mien of one having

important business with the Government. Four dollars a week was now

Buddy’s princely stipend from The Guardian, for working before and after

school hours at a special job of clipping and sorting advertisements

from the press of the State, for purposes of comparison.

Occasionally Buddy brought in an item of news, with all the pride of

a puppy bringing in a mouse, and beat it out with two fingers on a

borrowed typewriter. Such of these contributions as got into print

were paid for extra. Thereby Buddy was laboriously building up a bank

account. It was young Mr. Higman’s intention to be, one day, Governor of

the State. But in his wilder and more untrammeled flights, he hoped

to be an editor like Mr. Robson. Buddy was an enthusiastic, even a

hiero-phantic worker at his job. He was worth all that The Guardian paid

him. Even had he not been, the Boss would have kept him on. For he was,

all unknowing, a link; decidedly a tenuous link, but the only permanent

and reliable one, between Jeremy and a foregone past.

At the stamp window Mr. Burton Higman, dealing with the United States

Government, produced a silver dollar and gave his order in a firm and

manly voice.

“Hullo, Buddy,” greeted the clerk. “Still got that girl in Yurrup, I

see.”

A fire sprang and spread in Mr. Higman’s face. “And the rest in

postal-cards,” he directed with dignity.

“You’re our best little customer,” continued the flippant clerk. (The

little customer murderously contemplated arranging with The Guardian,

later, to write an editorial about him and get him fired!) “Write to her

every day, don’t che?”

“Shuttup, y’ ole fool!” retorted the infuriate youth, stepping aside to

reckon up his purchase, lest it might be short.

“Yessir,” continued the blatant gossip, to the next comer. “He sure is

the ready letter-writer, only _an’_ original. Don’t see how he has time

to help you edit your paper, Mr. Robson.”

Mr. Robson! The shock diverted Buddy at the twenty-eighth count. He

looked up into the friendly face of the Boss.

He hastened to defend himself.

“I yain’t, either, Mr. Robson. ’Tain’t letters at all. They’re fer

noospapers.”

“Are they?” said his chief, walking out into the wintry air with him. “I

did n’t know we had so much foreign circulation, Buddy.”

“No, sir; we ain’t. Say, Boss,” he added after a pause, “we gained five

new ads on The Record this week, an’ they only got one that we did n’t.”

“Good business, Buddy.”

“An’ I had two sticks in the paper yesterday. Dje see it? Story of the

kid that fell through the ice.”

“You’ll be a reporter one of these days, son.”

“Oh, gee!” said Buddy ecstatically. Then, with resentment, “What’s the

good of school, anyway?”

“If you’re going to be a real newspaper man you’ll need all the

education you can get.”

“Yes, sir.” The aspiring neophyte sighed. “That’s what She says.”

There was but one “She” in the vocabulary of the exclusive and

worshiping Buddy. Her name was never pronounced in the conversations

on the subject between himself and his Boss. There was no need of being

more specific, for either of them.

“It’s good advice.”

Buddy marched along beside his employer, obviously wriggling upon

the hook of some pointed thought. Presently further reticence became

impossible.

“Mr. Robson!”

“Well?”

“Them stamps--”

“What would the blue pencil do to a sentence beginning that way, Buddy?”

“_Those_ stamps--it’s like I told the fresh guy at the window.”

“They’re for the circulation department?”

“No, sir. But they’re for circulation all right. I been sendin’ the

paper every day to Hamburg.”

Jeremy’s pulses quickened. “Your own idea, Buddy?”

“Nope. I’m sendin’ it to Her. It ’s Her idear. She reads it reg’lar.

She’s deeply int’rusted in my cay-reer.”

“Where did you get that? It doesn’t sound like Her.”

“It ain’t. Got it out of a book,” confessed the boy. “I write to Her,

too,” he added happily. “She ast me to.”

“What does she think of your work?” inquired the Boss gravely.

“I ain’t heard from Her since I began gettin’ my stuff in the paper. But

I guess She likes the paper all right. She tells me in most every letter

what a big thing it is to help make a noospaper.”

“Does She? What else does She say?”

“I dunno.” The boy lost himself in thought. “It’s just a little here an’

a little there. She never says much; not any one time. But you can see

She thinks a lot of the Business.”

“Now, you would n’t suppose that, would you?” said the artful Jeremy,

feeding his hunger for the mere, dear memory of her brought back and

made real by speech. “It must be because you told her you were going to

be a newspaper man.”

“That’s it. She thinks it’s like being a preacher, only more so. She

says you must n’t ever be mean or give away a friend or take advantage

of having a noospaper to write for. An’ She says you got to always write

what you honest-to-God think, because it’s yella to do the other thing.

I guess She would n’t stand for a fake, not for a second! I bet She’d

take the hide off’n some o’ them--o’ those Record guys. An’ She says

the hardest thing ’ll be some time when there’s somethin’ a fella oughta

write an’ that ’ll get him in wrong if he does write it, for him not to

lay down an’ quit on it. An’ She says never, never to be afraid o’ your

job, because that makes the job your boss an’ not you the job’s boss.

An’ She says unless a guy can’t trust himself nobuddy can trust him

an’ be safe, no matter how much they want to. I guess that’s about all

right! Ain’t it, Boss?”

“It’s about all right, Buddy,” said Jeremy with an effort. That final

bit of philosophy had stabbed.

After the presses had stopped and the offices had emptied, that evening,

the editor of The Guardian sat at his desk with the little photograph of

Marcia Ames before him. He looked into the frank and radiant face; into

the eyes that met the world and its perplexities so steadily, with so

pure and single-minded a challenge.

“You did n’t ask much, did you, my dear!” he said softly to the picture.

“You only asked that I should be straight and honest; not a shifter and

a coward. Well, it was too much. Buddy may do better. I’ll help him as

far as I can. That’s a promise, my dear.”

He heard the departing Buddy whistling outside. His footsteps approached

the door. Jeremy slipped a hand over the picture.

“Anythin’ more you want me for, Boss?” asked the boy, appearing in the

doorway.

“No, Buddy. Good-night.”

“‘Night.” He paused. “I dunno’s She would have wanted me to tell you

about the paper,” he said. “She never told me not to, though. I kinda

thought you’d wanta know. I guess we got a man-size job makin’ a paper

good enough for Her to read, ain’t we, Boss!”

“I guess we have,” said Jeremy steadily.

The door shut and he returned to his contemplation of the picture. “You

read me, my dear,” he said. “You were reading me all the time. You read

me in the Eli Wade story. And in the golf story. And perhaps in others I

did n’t realize. You knew I’d come eventually to do just such a wretched

crawl as I did on the German school bill. You knew that you never could

trust yourself to me. You’d seen me go back on myself. You knew that

a man who would go back on himself would go back on you when the test

came.” He mused bitterly. “As I would have done,” said Jeremy Robson.

No man ever pronounced upon himself a harsher judgment.

CHAPTER X

BOSS,” said Andrew Galpin.

He had come in and perched himself upon a corner of Jeremy’s desk,

swinging his long legs. A folded copy of that day’s Guardian served him

for a fan, which he plied languidly, for it was the early hot spell

of June, 1914. The regard with which he favored his chief was both

affectionate and quizzical.

“Well?” queried Jeremy.

“D’ you know we’re pretty near two years old?”

“That’s right, Andy. We are.”

“D’ you feel it?”

“Yes, and a couple of hundred years on top of it.”

“So bad as that! We’re some old for our age, I’ll admit. But I don’t see

any signs of senile decay, yet.”

“Oh, we can still stir our bones enough to get off the press on time.”

“What do you think of this feller’s paper, anyway, Boss?”

“What do _you?_”

“Pretty well satisfied, thank you. We’ve got fourteen thousand

circulation that you could n’t pry loose with a crow-bar.”

“Could n’t we? I’m not going to try.”

“Not going to? You _have_ tried. You’ve stepped on every cussed one of

their cussed toes, one time or another. Dam’ fi don’t think you’ve got

’em so they _like_ it.”

“Queer way they’ve got of showing it, then. Do you ever read the

editorial correspondence?”

“Oh, that’s all right!” The general manager waved such matters loftily

away. “They quit the paper, sore. Then they get over it and come back.

If they don’t, there’s plenty of others to take their places. Even the

Dutchers”--this being, at the time, Mr. Galpin’s term indicative of that

powerful and flourishing organization, the Deutscher Club--“have come

around.”

“Not all of them. Stockmuller is out still.”

“He’s a stiff-neck. He’s the only one.”

“Not the only advertiser. The Laundry Association have never got over

Wong Kee, the yellow peril. The Emporium takes as little space as

possible. And I don’t notice the P.-U. crowding any contracts on us,

Andy.”

“Verrall tells me they’re coming back. At least, they’re showing

flirtatious signs.”

“No! I wonder what kind of a bargain they’ll offer now.”

“You ought to curb that mean, suspicious nature of yours, Boss,”

reproved Galpin solemnly. “Now, _I_ set it down to force of habit on the

P.-U.’s part. Something’s in the air. Therefore they begin to advertise.

It’s the cuttle-fish principle. Only they use printer’s ink.”

“What’s their little game?”

“Self-defense, I guess. The Governor is sharpening up his Corporation

Control Bill.”

“We’ll be for it. The P.-U. advertising won’t make any difference.

Montrose Clark ought to know that by this time. If he knows anything,”

qualified Jeremy.

“Don’t worry about President Puff. He knows a lot of things he did n’t

know before The Guardian tackled the job of his education. One of ’em

is that the P.-U. is going to need just as much friendship and just as

little enmity as it can get when this bill comes up.”

“And Clark is going to smooth us down with his advertising, eh?”

Andy lifted up his voice in pertinent song:

“There was a young man who said, ‘Why

Can’t I look in my Ear with my Eye?

If I set my mind to it

I’m sure I could do it.

You never can tell till you try.’

“There’s the P.-U. motto,” he added; “and a noble one it is. ‘You never

can tell till you try.’”

“Let ’em try somewhere else than in The Guardian.”

“Not so, Boss,” argued Galpin. “This bill is rough stuff. It’ll pretty

near wipe out the P.-U. They’re entitled to a yell, at least. Even

Verrall admits that. And what Verrall won’t swallow whole, when it comes

from Mart Embree, must be tough swallowing.”

“Verrall wants to make his advertising total as big as possible.”

“Being human--although an advertising manager--he does. Well, he’s got

no kick coming. Look at the clippings of your young friend and disciple,

Mr. Buddy Higman. The Record is nowhere. Respected Sir and Editor, as

your correspondents from the cheese district write; we’re making money

this year. Real, guaranteed money.”

“Enough to take up our note?”

“Why worry? The bank does n’t. Old Warrington purrs like a cat every

time he meets me. You can read in any witch-book that a banker purring

like a cat is a sure sign of prosperity.”

“What’s it in your scheme-hatching mind to do with all this prosperity,

Andy?”

“New press,” returned the general manager, who had been leading up to

this point.

Pro and con they argued it, the owner finally agreeing. “We really

owe it to the advertisers as well as the readers” had been Andy’s best

argument. “Look how they’ve stuck.”

“They’ve had to,” returned Jeremy grimly. “Half of ’em would have got

out at every bump if they had n’t been afraid.”

“Well, we’re solid with ’em now. Look what we did to ’em in April.

Hiked the rates a clean ten per cent all around. And did they peep?”

“They did not. They howled.”

“Force of habit again. They all came through, did n’t they? We’re making

it pay ’em.”

“We’re giving them all the return they’re entitled to,” agreed the

editor. “I wish I were as sure that we’re giving the reading public as

good.”

“Don’t hear many kicks, do you?”

“Lots. If I did n’t I’d _know_ we were rotten.”

“Ay-ah. That was a fool question of mine. But I mean, you can feel the

paper taking hold all the time, can’t you? We’re certainly putting it

over. We’ve made a Governor already. What do you expect? Want to elect a

President and Congress?”

“The Governor is one of my troubles, Andy.”

“Butting in?”

“You can’t call it that.”

“What can you call it?” demanded the downright Galpin.

“Well, boosting. Without him we would n’t be where we are.”

“Nor anywhere else,” added the other with emphasis. “Probably not. I

appreciate that. I’d _give_ him the paper, if he needed it, as far as

that goes. But as long as my name is on it, I want it to be my paper.”

“Well, ‘Smiling Mart’ isn’t trying to pry it away from you, is he?’

“Of course not. It’s hard to put into words. But I feel as if I--we--The

Guardian were being surrounded by a sort of political web.”

“The Governor being the spider?”

“No. It’s his web, in a way; but he is n’t spinning it. It’s being spun

for him and for us. All our readers identify us completely with his

policies. If I say anything editorially, it commits the Governor. People

take it for granted that we ‘re his mouthpiece. It is n’t fair to him or

to us.”

“Does he take advantage of it?”

“We--ell; I don’t know. He does n’t mean to. Every now and then,

though, something will come up where he wants us to do this or not to

do that--always some unimportant thing--because of its influence on more

important things that we ‘re both interested in.”

“As for instance?”

“Take all this boosting, press-agent stuff that comes along and that

Embree wants in,” replied Jeremy. “Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes

it’s personal. Sometimes it’s the German stuff that Wymett used to talk

about. I’ve got to admit that Embree’s view is always for the practical

good of the paper. By following his advice, we’ve held sulky advertisers

more than once. But I know this, I’m doing for him--and for the politics

of it--and for the paper itself, in a way, I guess--what I would n’t do

for any advertiser. And sometimes it’s been a matter of principles. Not

very important, maybe, but principles just the same. Compromise, Andy.”

“Life’s mostly compromise, I guess. There’s a little more of it in the

newspaper game than in other lines because the newspaper touches life at

more points than any other business.”

“I’ve always thought,” pursued Jeremy, “that when I came to own a

newspaper it would be independent if it was n’t anything else. Well,

look at The Guardian!”

“Ay-ah. I’m looking at it. What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s ducking a little here, and dodging a little there, and trying to

be cautious about this issue and polite about that man, and so on. That

is n’t my notion of being independent.”

“What is? I guess we’re as cocky as any paper in the country. You can’t

tell all the people to go to hell all the time,” pointed out the general

manager, reasonably.

“I don’t want to. But I want to be able to if I do want to. Am I talking

like a fool, Andy?”

“I don’t know,” answered the other, troubled.

A silence fell between them. Galpin whittled a pencil to so careful and

delicate a point that it immediately broke. He repeated the experiment

with like result before he spoke.

“Say, Jem.”

The other looked up, attentive. Seldom, since their new relationship

had the older man employed any formula of address other than the

half-jocular, half-official, “Boss.”

“Say it, Andy.”

“Who are you making this paper for?”

Across the editor’s face passed a swift shock, as of thought surprised

and betrayed.

“Making it for?” he said slowly.

“Ay-ah. For yourself, I guess. Huh?”

“Yes.”

“And it don’t suit?”

“Not altogether.”

“Not good enough?”

“No.”

“Ay-ah. I see.” One of those extraordinary flashes of intuitive insight

which sometimes pass electrically between surcharged and kindred minds,

culminated in the general manager’s next question. “What does she think

of it?”

“Who?” The startled counter-question represented less than Jeremy’s

normal frankness.

Andy rose and stood above the other. “How should I know who? If I did

I’d know more about the paper.”

“You’re right.” For the moment Jeremy was as intuitive as his friend.

“You think it would have been more honest of me, as I’m making a paper

for some one else, to let you in on it.”

“What does she think of The Guardian?” persisted Andy.

Jeremy stared out into the gray and bleak spaces. “God knows,” he said.

“I’ve no way of finding out.” Andy turned and went to the door. “Forget

it,” he said. The tone was his sufficient apology.

*****

That night of June, 1914, two years after Marcia Ames’s lips had pressed

themselves to his cheek, and he had felt her sobbing breath on his face,

Jeremy went again to the bridge where they had stood. A barge filled

with young people passed the turn of the lake. A canoe bearing a boy

and a girl--how young they seemed to lonely Jeremy, and how

enviable!--floated beneath him, and their speech came up to him, dim,

tender, and murmurous. Then, sped by a poignant magic, the blended

voices of Marcia’s song were wafted to him across the waters:

“Who wins his love shall lose her,

Who loses her shall gain,

For still the spirit wooes her,

A soul without a stain,

And Memory still pursues her

With longings not in vain!”

He could hear in the distance the faint plash of the oars that drove the

boat of song. The fairy voices, fainter, sang:

“He loses her who gains her,

Who watches, day by day,

The dust of time...”

The words were blurred as the unseen boat passed behind some unseen

cape; then the music died on the breeze. Jeremy bent over the railing,

where Marcia’s hand had rested.

*****

Half a world away an obscure fanatic, unknown to the world and to-day

almost forgotten by it, was gloomily, lonelily, dreamily blending

those common, inexpensive, terrific chemicals whereby he was to plunge

civilization in carnage. The happy boats passed on. The happy voices

blended again and were silenced. The busy presses chronicled the events

of unsuspecting nations to little folk of souls yet untouched who,

sleeping, “rose up to buy and sell again.” Then the bomb of the dreamy

fanatic was flung, and in the force of that explosion, the wave of war,

which had hung crested and suspended, broke and whelmed the world in

such flood that the quicksands upon its edges spread even to far-away

Fenchester.

END OF PART II

PART III

CHAPTER I

STRICKEN, at the first, by the unimaginable vastness of the tragedy

which had befallen Europe, the State of Centralia quickly recovered,

and lifted up a thousand voices of acclaim. Germany was being splendidly

victorious. Nothing could stop the Kaiser’s perfected war-machine;

nothing stand against the valor and discipline of the field-gray

legions. Triumph was a matter of only a few months; perhaps only a few

weeks. France would be crushed; Russia humbled; England, the faithless

and foolhardy, penned in her island and slowly starved into submission.

Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles! The loyalest Imperial colony could

hardly have rejoiced more openly or fervently than did Centralia,

a sovereign State of the United States of America. Slow, still,

systematic, scientific propagation of Deutschtum throughout the years

now reaped its due reward.

Those there were in the State, and many, who revolted from the brutality

of Germany’s war-making. But what voice could they find in Centralia,

where politicians and press and pulpit were dominated either by the

influence or the fear of organized German sentiment? Let a man but speak

a word against Germany’s cause, and the anathema of Deutschtum descended

upon him. A highly practical anathema, too; directed to his business

affairs and even his social relations. The accusation of prejudice, of

Wall Street influence, of British sympathies lay against any who dared

question or criticize the “necessary rigor” of German methods. The rape

of Belgium was hardly more triumphant than the seduction of Centralia.

Most conspicuous of the few who braved the local power of Deutschtum was

Magnus Laurens. Less than a month after the declaration of war he

spoke at a Manufacturers’ Association convention dinner in Bellair,

the metropolis of the State. “America and the Future” was his topic. It

should have been a safe topic; safe and sane, and in the hands of a

less obstinately courageous partisan would have been. Indeed, for twenty

minutes, it was. Then the speaker, setting back his massive shoulders,

and with a significant deepening of his voice, challenged the sense of

justice of the gathering, in these words:

“What future can America hope for if the policies of nations are to be

dominated by the nation to whom the sacredest pledge is but a scrap of

paper when it conflicts with her blood-stained ambitions?”

Gordon Fliess, the head of the great Fliess Breweries, was on his

feet instantly. “Order!” he shouted. “The speaker is out of order, Mr.

Chairman.”

Echoes came from all parts of the banqueting hall, mingled with cries

of dissent. Laurens raised his great voice, and dominated the tumult. It

was a reckless speech; it was violent; it was, in parts, unfair. But it

raised a voice in Centralia that arraigned the State before a court of

honor for self-judgment; a voice too powerful to be silenced, too clear

to be ignored.

Yet, instantly, the silencers were at work. Their first attempt was

through the toastmaster who laid an arresting hand upon the speaker’s

arm, only to be shaken off with a violence which sufficiently warned

him. Shouts, hoots, hisses, and cat-calls failed to make any impression

on Laurens. Galvanized into action the reporters were taking down every

word. But there descended upon them an emergency committee hastily

constituted by Fliess, Mark Henkel, of the Henkel Casket Company, and

other reliable Germans who not only warned them against publishing the

proceedings, but also manned the telephones and issued their directions

through owners, advertising managers, and editors regarding the event.

Out of six dailies published in Bellair, only The Journal, already under

suspicion because of its independence, reported the one sensational and

interesting speech of the occasion. That single publication, however,

gave the matter currency. The German dailies took it up virulently. The

Journal was all but swamped with protests.

Political matters had, on the day when the Laurens speech was published,

brought Cassius Kimball, the managing editor and dominant spirit of The

Journal, to Fenchester to see Governor Embree, whose fortunes the paper

had early backed. After his call, the Governor sent for Robson. They had

not seen each other since war began. Martin Embree’s smile was happy as

that of a boy.

“Well, Jem,” was his greeting. “We’ve got him this time.”

“Who?”

“Magnus Laurens. Did n’t you see this morning’s Bellair Journal?”

“I’ve just been reading it.”

“That kills Laurens.”

“For what?”

“For everything and anything in this State.

Governor--Legislature--dogcatcher; he couldn’t get elected to anything,

if this is handled properly.”

“I’m giving his speech in full, in to-night’s paper.”

“That’s it! And a slashing editorial to follow tomorrow. Eh?”

“Slashing which way?”

“Why, into Laurens.”

“Not me,” declared Jeremy with more emphasis than grammar.

“You would n’t back him up!” cried Embree.

“Not in everything. There’s a good deal in that speech, though, that

needed to be said; that was _right_.”

“Jem, are you off your head?”

“Never felt saner in my life.”

“They always say that just before they begin to bite the paper off the

walls,” smiled the other. “Come, Jem! Here’s our chance to put Laurens

out of the game once and for all. Give me a column and I’ll do it

myself.”

“The chance ’ll have to wait.”

“Until when?”

“Until he is n’t as near right as he is on this.”

“Jem,” said the Governor suddenly growing grave, “why is it you’re

always pussy-footing when Laurens is in question?”

“I don’t like that word, Martin.”

“Word the question to suit yourself, then.”

“And I don’t like the question. It reminds me that the last time I

pussy-footed was on an issue that Laurens met fair and square.”

“And it licked him.”

“There are worse things than being licked.”

“That’s cant,” retorted Embree promptly. “When you’re licked

politically, you’re through. You can’t get anything done. Oh, I don’t

mean that I’m afraid to fight a losing fight when a big principle is

involved. My record shows that, plain enough. But this war is n’t our

fight.”

“What’s your view on the war, Mart?”

“It came in the nick of time.”

“For what?”

“For us. For our programme. We can put through pretty much anything we

want in the line of reform legislation. As long as the war continues,

the German vote will stand by us almost solidly, if only we play fair

with them. Even men like Wanser and Fliess and the big business crowd

that have always fought us are ready to swing into line, if we don’t

rush things too hard. Why, Jem,”--the keen, fine face lighted up with

enthusiasm,--“we can make Centralia the banner State of the country in

social reform and popular rule.”

“As to rushing things, is n’t this Corporation Control Bill a little

rough?”

“It’s meant to be. It’ll be toned down in conference. We made it pretty

stiff to throw a scare into the P.-U. crowd. There won’t be anything we

can’t do to those fellows, if the war keeps on long enough.”

“What do you really think about the invasion of Belgium, Martin?” asked

Jeremy abruptly.

“I don’t like it.”

“I hate the whole business.”

“But I don’t like war, anyway. And this is part of war. I’m going to

keep my hands off. Neutrality is our watchword, Jem. The President has

given it to us, and I guess in international affairs we can afford to

follow the President. Let Magnus Laurens and his gang do the fireworks.

They’ll only burn their fingers.”

“Belgium was neutral,” said Jeremy gloomily.

“Let Belgium alone and ’tend to Laurens.”

But this the editor of The Guardian would not do. He ignored the

Manufacturers’ Association banquet incident editorially. Publication of

the mere report of the Laurens speech, however, stirred up a volume of

local displeasure chiefly on the part of the Deutscher Club element, and

The Guardian received some pointed letters on the subject of neutrality.

“Neutrality,” commented Andrew Galpin thoughtfully to his chief. “That’s

good business for Mart Embree. He can preach neutrality and tickle the

Germans at the same time, for our kind of neutrality in Centralia is

sure hall-marked ‘Made-in-Germany.’ But how neutral are _we_ going to

be?”

“There’s no such thing as ‘how neutral.’”

“Oh, is n’t there! Look here, Boss; what’s practically every paper in

this State, on this war, except The Bellair Journal?”

“German. They’re afraid not to be.”

“Suppose a paper is really neutral; gives both sides an equal show.

What’ll it look like where all the rest are pro-German? What’d it look

like in Germany?”

“I get your point, Andy. It will seem to lean to the Allies by

contrast.”

“There you are! Well, what are we going to do?”

“Play fair.”

“Sure. But we can be cagey about it, can’t we?”

“To what extent?”

“Enough to live. I don’t want to see The Guardian mess up in a fight

that’s none of our fight and get done up so bad that we can’t help win

the fight that is our fight. Let England lick Germany. Our business

is to play the game here at home and lick the corporation crowd for

legislative control of the State. Don’t you think it’s going to be a

cinch, either, just because we’ve elected Mart Embree Governor!”

“Expediency is a queer text for you, Andy.”

“I’m all for expediency as against idiocy.”

“What about butting into the Wade riot?”

“That was for a friend. War, right there under my nose. This other thing

is four thousand miles away. And I hope it stays there!”

“Andy,” propounded his chief, “what do you really think of the

Governor?”

“‘Smiling Mart’?”

“Is that an answer?”

“Ay-ah. I always wonder about one thing. If you brushed that smile off

quick, what ’d be under it?”

“He asked me to sit in his box at the convention meeting of the

Federated German Societies.”

“Oh, you got an invitation from the Societies, did you?”

“Yes. Issued by Bausch as secretary.”

“I bet he spit in the ink before he signed it. Going?”

“What do you think?”

“Sure.”

“Expediency again, eh?”

“Ay-ah. There’s no principle in turning down an invitation, even if it

_will_ do us some good!”

“All right, Andy. I’ll go,” laughed the editor.

He sat in the Governor’s box at the meeting. There was the same

pan-Germanic atmosphere that there had been two years before, but

magnified. The Imperial banners were more flamboyant, more triumphant.

The verve and swing of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” was

more martial; it defied the world. The speeches were more fiery,

more challenging, more instinct with the fierce pride of a dominant

nationalism; and again Jeremy felt resentfully, in the references to the

adoptive republic, that tone of bland and intolerable condescension to a

lesser people.

The Governor’s box was that which Magnus Laurens had occupied in 1912.

Sitting well back in it, Jeremy faced the high balcony. In the far

corner a fat, steamy German in a fancy waistcoat roared out “Hochs!” of

assent and applause to the speakers. But before Jeremy’s wistful vision

he dissolved, giving place to another figure; a figure slender, gallant,

boyish, erect. Martin Embree’s touch on his knee recalled Jeremy to

realities.

“Wake up, Jem! What ghosts are you seeing?”

“None. Nothing,” muttered Jeremy, and stood while the fervid gathering

sang thunderously “Die Wacht am Rhein.”