Conditions improved steadily with the Wycliffs. Mrs. Wycliff and Robert
were both gaining slowly, but surely. From various sources, some of
them unexpected, came sufficient income to pay all bills promptly when
due. Wycliff had dabbled in literature since boyhood, and his income
from this source, though small, was helpful.
While he was still at home, helping about the house, and frequently
consulted by Hugh Maxwell, and by those whose political fortunes were
linked with his, a stranger called. He was a keen-looking man, who
wasted no time in ceremony.
“John Wycliff, I believe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am Wilfrid Terry, of the Elmfield _Star_. We are not satisfied with
our sales in Papyrus. We sell only a thousand papers here, whereas
we ought to sell fifteen hundred. We are told that you have had
experience in newspaper work, and a gentleman who is acquainted with
your former work, thinks you could bring our sales in Papyrus up to
what they ought to be.”
“I don’t believe that I could work for you.”
“Indeed, and why not?”
“As I have learned it, good journalism is no respecter of persons. I
could not, or rather I would not, work under your system, which tells
the truth about the poor man, but conceals the truth about the rich
man.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I can tell you in a way that you will understand,” replied Wycliff
sharply: “When Rudolph Hartland, a small contractor, had trouble with
his workmen, and a dozen of them went on a strike, you devoted columns
of valuable space to the occurrence; but when hundreds of employees in
the Liberty Mill of the Baldwin Paper Company, struck against a cut in
wages, your paper never mentioned it. Here was an important event, in
which the public had a vital interest, but you would not allow any
reference to it in the paper. You have never allowed the facts to be
presented in your publication regarding the partial disfranchisement
of workingmen in Papyrus, by which all mill-hands are prevented from
having any voice in town-government, except to vote for town-officers,
being shut out from voting for appropriations. Only a short time ago
you refused to publish Reverend Ralph Cutter’s farewell sermon, the
most notable sermon, perhaps, ever preached in Papyrus. Why have you
refused publicity to these things, which the people want to know, and
which the people are entitled to know? Simply because you are afraid
of offending the Baldwins. You ought to wear a brass collar, with your
owner’s name on it.”
John Wycliff’s voice and features were not expressive. He could never
have been an actor. But he was getting waked up, and a little light
was creeping into his one lonesome, dull gray eye. Such expression as
there was in his features was of loathing and contempt. He looked as
if he would have been glad to take up his visitor with a pair of tongs,
deposit him gently in some out-of-the-way place, and cover him up so
that he would not offend the senses of decent people.
“I didn’t come here to listen to abuse of this kind,” exclaimed Terry
angrily.
“Never mind what you came here for,” retorted Wycliff. “If you stay
around me you will hear a grain of truth occasionally. There may be
something to be said for a man like Deacon Surface, who serves the
devil for a fat salary, but you serve him for nothing. The Baldwins
despise you, as such men always despise their slaves, and the public
despises you, too. And what do you get out of it? You complain that you
are selling only one thousand papers in Papyrus. Why not give the facts
that the people are entitled to know, and sell fifteen hundred?”
Terry was angry, but the money was what he was after, and possibly
Wycliff was right, after all, in what he said.
“Let’s talk business,” he said. “Come out to Lawyer Sturgis’ office
to-morrow, and we’ll sign an agreement. If you can bring our
circulation in Papyrus up to fifteen hundred copies, you shall have
fifteen hundred dollars a year, and one year’s salary guaranteed. You
shall handle the Papyrus news and comment upon it as you see fit, so
long as you do not render the publisher of the paper liable to an
action at law. If we differ on this point, Lawyer Sturgis’ decision
shall be final.”
“It’s a bargain,” said Wycliff, and his caller departed.
The details were arranged, and contract signed, the next day. A few
evenings later Wycliff was sitting in what he humorously called his
“office.” It contained a few books, mostly for reference, a convenient
desk, a small safe, a stuffed cougar, or mountain lion, from the
Rockies, and a mounted moosehead from Maine--all of these things being
reminders of more prosperous times. Frowning upon all, and seemingly
out of place, was a good likeness of Congressman Baldwin, of whom
Wycliff had been a great admirer.
Answering a timid knock, Wycliff found a fellow-laborer at the door,
a weak-minded French Canadian, a mere boy, who went by the name of
“Half-witted Joe.”
“How do you do, Joe?” he asked when his old comrade was seated.
“Mad.”
“What is the trouble?”
“Mr. Sharp no pay me. He say me no worth ten dollars.”
“Did he pay you anything?”
“Yes, five dollars for clothes.”
“You worked one month?”
“Yes, he promise me ten dollars and board.”
“I heard him.”
“Me get up early; me work late--eight o’clock, sometimes. Me work hard.
Mr. Sharp say me no earn only five dollars. Damn.”
“What will you do?”
“Me go home, Canada.”
“Have you money enough to take you home?”
“No. Me sell watch, five dollar.”
He exhibited a watch, for which Wycliff thought he could safely pay
that amount, and he handed Joe the money.
“Thank,” said Joe, as he stepped over the threshold, “Me fix old Sharp.”
“Don’t hurt Mr. Sharp,” Wycliff cautioned him. “Mr. Sharp has a good
wife, and good children. Besides, you would go to prison.”
The tone of his visitor changed. He seemed to realize that he had
blundered in making the threat.
“Me no hurt Mr. Sharp,” he finally promised, and then he went out into
the darkness.
“Don’t lose your money,” was Wycliff’s parting advice.
When he was out in the night again, Joe’s anger kindled anew, as he
remembered the farm-superintendent’s injustice. Although Wycliff’s
warning prevented him from doing Sharp bodily harm, he was still bent
on revenge. Revenge was still the uppermost idea in Half-Witted Joe’s
unbalanced mind, as he approached Beauna Vista, and the dark night had
its strong influence upon his thought and purpose.
He glanced in at the farm-house windows. The family and the farm-hands
were busy reading. Mr. Sharp, he knew, had gone to a public meeting.
The coast was clear. He stole around to the side of the barn farthest
from the house. He went through an unused stable, to where the lower
part of a great mow of hay was exposed.
There was the flash of a match, the sudden darting upward of the flames
on the edge of the hay-mow, and then Joe hurried out through the yard,
across the meadow, and reaching the railroad track, followed it to the
edge of a piece of woods.
Here he halted, cowering in some bushes, and looked. He saw the light
gleam from the big barn-doors, saw the flames break through the roof,
saw the inmates of the house rush out, and heard the alarm sounded
from farm-house to farm-house. Soon a neighboring farmer rushed past
Joe, on his way to the fire, and as the flames now lit up the landscape
all around, Joe realized that he might be discovered, and passed on.
But while he looked, he feasted his eyes as greedily as a former savage
might have done, on the destruction of a pioneer home.
“Me fix you, Jake Sharp,” he said, in a whisper, as he shook his fist
in farewell at Beauna Vista. He did not realize that the loss fell upon
others, and not upon Sharp. An hour later he was aboard a train on his
way to Canada.
The farm-building which is fired is usually doomed. It could not be
otherwise on this occasion, when the flames had their start in a
forty-ton mow of hay, dry as tinder.
The farm-laborers first saved the horses. Their next move was
such as might have been expected from excited men, unused to such
emergencies--they began dragging out the vehicles, until Mrs. Sharp,
with more forethought than the men, exclaimed: “The cows! the cows
next!”
“But we cannot get at the door of the cow-stable,” the laborers
protested.
“Take crowbars and break in the side of the barn!” she ordered, and
under a woman’s direction the work of rescue went on.
The fire-department of Papyrus responded tardily, owing to distance,
and could do but little, except to protect the farm-house. Finally, as
the glowing pageant lit up the landscape for miles in every direction,
half the men of Papyrus were on the scene, but could do nothing
except listen to the crackle of burning timbers, and the bellowing of
imprisoned and roasting cattle.
John Wycliff knew very well that the Baldwins would not wish the
story of the relations of Jacob Sharp and Half-Witted Joe published,
but he considered that the public was entitled to know it. The story
of the poor Canadian boy, and his treatment by Jacob Sharp, was told
in the _Star_ as graphically as the story of the fire itself. In
his narrative Wycliff made a clear distinction between known facts
regarding the fire, and mere suspicions or rumors.
The _Tribune_, the _Star’s_ Elmfield rival, the property of Congressman
Baldwin, made this announcement:--
“Not a clue is obtainable regarding the origin of the fire. Mr. Sharp,
the foreman of Beauna Vista, is a man who always keeps the good will
of his employees, so that not a shadow of suspicion can lie in that
direction.”
This way of dealing with news was entirely in harmony with the usual
policy of the Baldwins, where their own interests were involved.
There were several persons who were angry at the course taken by the
_Star_. The Baldwins were angry, partly because they regarded it as an
intrusion upon their private affairs and partly because the fire-story
had dealt Sharp a hard blow in his fight for the office of Selectman.
As for Sharp, he threatened various things, but his own attorney told
him to “pocket his wrath and say nothing,” as he could not maintain an
action against the _Star_.
Terry was happy, as the sales of the _Star_, in Papyrus, had been
lifted between two and three hundred, and the increase promised to
prove permanent.