Bartley walked about the streets for a long time, without purpose or
direction, brooding fiercely on his wrongs, and reminding himself how
Marcia had determined to have him, and had indeed flung herself upon his
mercy, with all sorts of good promises; and had then at once taken the
whip-hand, and goaded and tormented him ever since. All the kindness of
their common life counted for nothing in this furious reverie, or rather it
was never once thought of; he cursed himself for a fool that he had ever
asked her to marry him, and for doubly a fool that he had married her when
she had as good as asked him. He was glad, now, that he had taunted her
with that; he only regretted that he had told her he was sorry. He was
presently aware of being so tired that he could scarcely pull one leg after
another; and yet he felt hopelessly wide awake. It was in simple despair of
anything else to do that he climbed the stairs to Ricker's lofty perch
in the Chronicle-Abstract office. Ricker turned about as he entered, and
stared up at him from beneath the green pasteboard visor with which he was
shielding his eyes from the gas; his hair, which was of the harshness and
color of hay, was stiffly poked up and strewn about on his skull, as if it
were some foreign product.
“Hello!” he said. “Going to issue a morning edition of the Events?”
“What makes you think so?”
“Oh, I supposed you evening-paper gents went to bed with the hens. What
has kept you up, esteemed contemporary?” He went on working over some
despatches which lay upon his table.
“Don't you want to come out and have some oysters?” asked Bartley.
“Why this princely hospitality? I'll come with you in half a minute,”
Ricker said, going to the slide that carried up the copy to the
composing-room and thrusting his manuscript into the box.
“Where are you going?” he asked, when they found themselves out in the
soft starlit autumnal air; and Bartley answered with the name of an
oyster-house, obscure, but of singular excellence.
“Yes, that's the best place,” Ricker commented. “What I always wonder at in
you is the rapidity with which you've taken on the city. You were quite
in the green wood when you came here, and now you know your Boston like a
little man. I suppose it's your newspaper work that's familiarized you with
the place. Well, how do you like your friend Witherby, as far as you've
gone?”
“Oh, we shall get along, I guess,” said Bartley. “He still keeps me in the
background, and plays at being editor, but he pays me pretty well.”
“Not too well, I hope.”
“I should like to see him try it.”
“I shouldn't,” said Ricker. “He'd expect certain things of you, if he did.
You'll have to look out for Witherby.”
“You mean that he's a scamp?”
“No; there isn't a better conscience than Witherby carries in the whole
city. He's perfectly honest. He not only believes that he has a right to
run the Events in his way; but he sincerely believes that he is right in
doing it. There's where he has the advantage of you, if you doubt him. I
don't suppose he ever did a wrong thing in his life; he'd persuade himself
that the thing was right before he did it.”
“That's a common phenomenon, isn't it?” sneered Bartley. “Nobody sins.”
“You're right, partly. But some of us sinners have our misgivings, and
Witherby never has. You know he offered me your place?”
“No, I didn't,” said Bartley, astonished and not pleased.
“I thought he might have told you. He made me inducements; but I was afraid
of him: Witherby is the counting-room incarnate. I talked you into him
for some place or other; but he didn't seem to wake up to the value of my
advice at once. Then I couldn't tell what he was going to offer you.”
“Thank you for letting me in for a thing you were afraid of!”
“I didn't believe he would get you under his thumb, as he would me. You've
got more back-bone than I have. I have to keep out of temptation; you have
noticed that I never drink, and I would rather not look upon Witherby when
he is red and giveth his color in the cup. I'm sorry if I've let you in for
anything that you regret. But Witherby's sincerity makes him dangerous,--I
own that.”
“I think he has some very good ideas about newspapers,” said Bartley,
rather sulkily.
“Oh, very,” assented Ricker. “Some of the very best going. He believes
that the press is a great moral engine, and that it ought to be run in the
interest of the engineer.”
“And I suppose you believe that it ought to be run in the interest of the
public?”
“Exactly--after the public has paid.”
“Well, I don't; and I never did. A newspaper is a private enterprise.”
“It's private property, but it isn't a private enterprise, and in its very
nature it can't be. You know I never talk 'journalism' and stuff; it amuses
me to hear the young fellows at it, though I think they might be doing
something worse than magnifying their office; they might be decrying it.
But I've got a few ideas and principles of my own in my back pantaloons
pocket.”
“Haul them out,” said Bartley.
“I don't know that they're very well formulated,” returned Ricker, “and I
don't contend that they're very new. But I consider a newspaper a public
enterprise, with certain distinct duties to the public. It's sacredly bound
not to do anything to deprave or debauch its readers; and it's sacredly
bound not to mislead or betray them, not merely as to questions of morals
and politics, but as to questions of what we may lump as 'advertising.' Has
friend Witherby developed his great ideas of advertisers' rights to you?”
Bartley did not answer, and Ricker went on: “Well, then, you can understand
my position, when I say it's exactly the contrary.”
“You ought to be on a religious newspaper, Ricker,” said Bartley with a
scornful laugh.
“Thank you, a secular paper is bad enough for me.”
“Well, I don't pretend that I make the Events just what I want,” said
Bartley. “At present, the most I can do is to indulge in a few cheap dreams
of what I should do, if I had a paper of my own.”
“What are your dreams? Haul out, as you say.”
“I should make it pay, to begin with; and I should make it pay by making
it such a thorough newspaper that every class of people _must_ have it. I
should cater to the lowest class first, and as long as I was poor I would
have the fullest and best reports of every local accident and crime; that
would take all the rabble. Then, as I could afford it, I'd rise a little,
and give first-class non-partisan reports of local political affairs; that
would fetch the next largest class, the ward politicians of all parties.
I'd lay for the local religious world, after that;--religion comes right
after politics in the popular mind, and it interests the women like murder:
I'd give the minutest religious intelligence, and not only that, but the
religious gossip, and the religious scandal. Then I'd go in for fashion and
society,--that comes next. I'd have the most reliable and thorough-going
financial reports that money could buy. When I'd got my local ground
perfectly covered, I'd begin to ramify. Every fellow that could spell, in
any part of the country, should understand that, if he sent me an account
of a suicide, or an elopement, or a murder, or an accident, he should
be well paid for it; and I'd rise on the same scale through all the
departments. I'd add art criticisms, dramatic and sporting news, and book
reviews, more for the looks of the thing than for anything else; they don't
any of 'em appeal to a large class. I'd get my paper into such a shape
that people of every kind and degree would have to say, no matter what
particular objection was made to it, 'Yes, that's so; but it's the best
_news_paper in the world, _and we can't get along without it.'”_
“And then,” said Ricker, “you'd begin to clean up, little by little,--let
up on your murders and scandals, and purge and live cleanly like a
gentleman? The trick's been tried before.”
They had arrived at the oyster-house, and were sitting at their table,
waiting for the oysters to be brought to them. Bartley tilted his chair
back. “I don't know about the cleaning up. I should want to keep all my
audience. If I cleaned up, the dirty fellows would go off to some one else;
and the fellows that pretended to be clean would be disappointed.”
“Why don't you get Witherby to put your ideas in force?” asked Ricker,
dryly.
Bartley dropped his chair to all fours, and said with a smile, “He belongs
to church.”
“Ah! he has his limitations. What a pity! He has the money to establish
this great moral engine of yours, and you haven't. It's a loss to
civilization.”
“One thing, I know,” said Bartley, with a certain effect of virtue, “nobody
should buy or sell me; and the advertising element shouldn't spread beyond
the advertising page.”
“Isn't that rather high ground?” inquired Ricker.
Bartley did not think it worth while to answer. “I don't believe that a
newspaper is obliged to be superior in tone to the community,” he said.
“I quite agree with you.”
“And if the community is full of vice and crime, the newspaper can't do
better than reflect its condition.”
“Ah! there I should distinguish, esteemed contemporary. There are several
tones in every community, and it will keep any newspaper scratching to rise
above the highest. But if it keeps out of the mud at all, it can't help
rising above the lowest. And no community is full of vice and crime any
more than it is full of virtue and good works. Why not let your model
newspaper mirror these?”
“They're not snappy.”
“No, that's true.”
“You must give the people what they want.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, it's a beautiful dream,” said Ricker, “nourished on a youth sublime.
Why do not these lofty imaginings visit us later in life? You make me quite
ashamed of my own ideal newspaper. Before you began to talk, I had been
fancying that the vice of our journalism was its intense localism. I have
doubted a good while whether a drunken Irishman who breaks his wife's head,
or a child who falls into a tub of hot water, has really established a
claim on the public interest. Why should I be told by telegraph how three
negroes died on the gallows in North Carolina? Why should an accurate
correspondent inform me of the elopement of a married man with his
maid-servant in East Machias? Why should I sup on all the horrors of a
railroad accident, and have the bleeding fragments hashed up for me at
breakfast? Why should my newspaper give a succession of shocks to my
nervous system, as I pass from column to column, and poultice me between
shocks with the nastiness of a distant or local scandal? You reply, because
I like spice. But I don't. I am sick of spice; and I believe that most of
our readers are.”
“Cater to them with milk-toast, then,” said Bartley.
Ricker laughed with him, and they fell to upon their oysters.
When they parted, Bartley still found himself wakeful. He knew that he
should not sleep if he went home, and he said to himself that he could not
walk about all night. He turned into a gayly-lighted basement, and asked
for something in the way of a nightcap.
The bar-keeper said there was nothing like a hot-scotch to make you sleep;
and a small man with his hat on, who had been talking with the bar-keeper,
and coming up to the counter occasionally to eat a bit of cracker or a bit
of cheese out of the two bowls full of such fragments that stood at the end
of the counter, said that this was so.
It was very cheerful in the bar-room, with the light glittering on the rows
of decanters behind the bar-keeper, a large, stout, clean, pale man in his
shirt-sleeves, after the manner of his kind; and Bartley made up his mind
to stay there till he was drowsy, and to drink as many hot-scotches as were
necessary to the result. He had his drink put on a little table and sat
down to it easily, stirring it to cool it a little, and feeling its
flattery in his brain from the first sip.
The man who was munching cheese and crackers wore a hat rather large for
him, pulled down over his eyes. He now said that he did not care if he took
a gin-sling, and the bar-keeper promptly set it before him on the counter,
and saluted with “Good evening, Colonel,” a large man who came in, carrying
a small dog in his arms. Bartley recognized him as the manager of a variety
combination playing at one of the theatres, and the manager recognized the
little man with the gin-sling as Tommy. He did not return the bar-keeper's
salutation, but he asked, as he sat down at a table, “What do I want for
supper, Charley?”
The bar-keeper said, oracularly, as he leaned forward to wipe his counter
with a napkin, “Fricassee chicken.”
“Fricassee devil,” returned the manager. “Get me a Welsh rabbit.”
The bar-keeper, unperturbed by this rejection, called into the tube behind
him, “One Welsh rabbit.”
“I want some cold chicken for my dog,” said the manager.
“One cold chicken,” repeated the bar-keeper, in his tube.
“White meat,” said the manager.
“White meat,” repeated the bar-keeper.
“I went into the Parker House one night about midnight, and I saw four
doctors there eating lobster salad, and devilled crab, and washing it down
with champagne; and I made up my mind that the doctors needn't talk to me
any more about what was wholesome. I was going in for what was _good_. And
there aint anything better for supper than Welsh rabbit in _this_ world.”
As the manager addressed this philosophy to the company at large, no one
commented upon it, which seemed quite the same to the manager, who hitched
one elbow over the back of his chair, and caressed with the other hand the
dog lying in his lap.
The little man in the large hat continued to walk up and down, leaving his
gin-sling on the counter, and drinking it between his visits to the cracker
and cheese.
“What's that new piece of yours, Colonel?” he asked, after a while. “I aint
seen it yet.”
“Legs, principally,” sighed the manager. “That's what the public wants. I
give the public what it wants. I don't pretend to be any better than the
public. Nor any worse,” he added, stroking his dog.
These ideas struck Bartley in their accordance with his own ideas of
journalism, as he had propounded them to Ricker. He had drunk half of his
hot-scotch.
“That's what I say,” assented the little man. “All that a theatre has got
to do is to keep even with the public.”
“That's so, Tommy,” said the manager of a school of morals, with wisdom
that impressed more and more the manager of a great moral engine.
“The same principle runs through everything,” observed Bartley, speaking
for the first time.
The drink had stiffened his tongue somewhat, but it did not incommode his
utterance; it rather gave dignity to it, and his head was singularly clear.
He lifted his empty glass from the table, and, catching the bar-keeper's
eye, said, “Do it again.” The man brought it back full.
“It runs through the churches as well as the theatres. As long as the
public wanted hell-fire, the ministers gave them hell-fire. But you
couldn't get hell-fire--not the pure, old-fashioned brimstone article--out
of a popular preacher now, for love or money.”
The little man said, “I guess you've got about the size of it there”; and
the manager laughed.
“It's just so with the newspapers, too,” said Bartley. “Some newspapers
used to stand out against publishing murders, and personal gossip, and
divorce trials. There ain't a newspaper that pretends to keep anyways up
with the times, now, that don't do it! The public want spice, and they will
have it!”
“Well, sir,” said the manager, “that's my way of looking at it. I say, if
the public don't want Shakespeare, give 'em burlesque till they're sick of
it. I believe in what Grant said: 'The quickest way to get rid of a bad law
is to enforce it.'”
“That's so,” said the little man, “every time.” He added, to the
bar-keeper, that he guessed he would have some brandy and soda, and
Bartley found himself at the bottom of his second tumbler. He ordered it
replenished.
The little man seemed to be getting further away. He said, from the
distance to which he had withdrawn, “You want to go to bed with three
nightcaps on, like an old-clothes man.”
Bartley felt like resenting the freedom, but he was anxious to pour his
ideas of journalism into the manager's sympathetic ear, and he began to
talk, with an impression that it behooved him to talk fast. His brain was
still very clear, but his tongue was getting stiffer. The manager now had
his Welsh rabbit before him; but Bartley could not make out how it had got
there, nor when. He was talking fast, and he knew, by the way everybody was
listening, that he was talking well. Sometimes he left his table, glass in
hand, and went and laid down the law to the manager, who smilingly assented
to all he said. Once he heard a low growling at his feet, and, looking
down, he saw the dog with his plate of cold chicken, that had also been
conjured into the room somehow.
“Look out,” said the manager, “he'll nip you in the leg.”
“Curse the dog! he seems to be on all sides of you,” said Bartley. “I can't
stand anywhere.”
“Better sit down, then,” suggested the manager.
“Good idea,” said the little man, who was still walking up and down. It
appeared as if he had not spoken for several hours; his hat was further
over his eyes. Bartley had thought he was gone.
“What business is it of yours?” he demanded, fiercely, moving towards the
little man.
“Come, none of that,” said the bar-keeper, steadily.
Bartley looked at him in amazement. “Where's your hat?” he asked.
The others laughed; the bar-keeper smiled.
“Are you a married man?”
“Never mind!” said the bar-keeper, severely.
Bartley turned to the little man: “You married?”
“Not _much_,” replied the other. He was now topping off with a
whiskey-straight.
Bartley referred himself to the manager: “You?”
“_Pas si bête_,” said the manager, who did his own adapting from the
French.
“Well, you're scholar, and you're gentleman,” said Bartley. The indefinite
articles would drop out, in spite of all his efforts to keep them in. “'N I
want ask you what you do--to--ask--you--what--would--you--do,” he repeated,
with painful exactness, but he failed to make the rest of the sentence
perfect, and he pronounced it all in a word, “'fyour-wifelockyouout?”
“I'd take a walk,” said the manager.
“I'd bu'st the door in,” said the little man.
Bartley turned and gazed at him as if the little man were a much more
estimable person than he had supposed. He passed his arm through the little
man's, which the other had just crooked to lift his whiskey to his mouth.
“Look here,” said Bartley, “tha's jus' what _I_ told her. I want you to go
home 'th me; I want t' introduce you to my wife.”
“All right,” answered the little man. “Don't care if I do.” He dropped his
tumbler to the floor. “Hang it up, Charley, glass and all. Hang up this
gentleman's nightcaps--my account. Gentleman asks me home to his house,
I'll hang him--I'll get him hung,--well, fix it to suit yourself,--every
time!”
They got themselves out of the door, and the manager said to the
bar-keeper, who came round to gather up the fragments of the broken
tumbler, “Think his wife will be glad to see 'em, Charley?”
“Oh, they'll be taken care of before they reach his house.”