GROWING familiarity with his work did not restore to Seth the lofty
conceptions of journalism’s duties and delights which he had nourished
on the hill-side farm, and which had been so ingloriously dimmed and
defaced by his first day’s experience.
The tasks set before him, to which he gradually became accustomed,
seemed almost as unintellectual and mechanical as the ploughing and
planting he had forsaken. The rule of condensation, compression,
continually dinned into his ears by his mentors, robbed his labors of
all possible charm. To “boil down” columns of narrative into a few lines
of bald, cold statement; to chronicle day after day in the curtest
form, fires, failures, crimes, disasters, deaths, in a wearying chain of
uninteresting news notes; to throw remorselessly into the journalistic
crucible all the work of imagination, of genius, of deep fine thought
which came into his hands, together with the wordy dross spun out by
the swarm of superficial scribblers, and extract from good and bad alike
only the meaningless, miserable fact--this was a task against which, in
the first weeks of experience, his whole soul revolted.
By the time he had become reconciled to it, and had mastered its tricks,
his dream of journalism as the most exalted of all departments of
activity seemed to him like some far-away fantasy of childhood.
He not only had failed to draw inspiration from his work; it was already
ceasing to interest him. Under pleasanter conditions, he felt that
he would have at least liked the proof-reading portion of the daily
routine; but the printers were so truculent and hostile, and seemed
so pre-determined to treat him as their natural enemy, that this was
irksome, too. There was no relief to the distasteful monotony in
other branches of his work. Even the agricultural column, which he had
promised himself to so vastly improve, yielded no satisfaction. The
floating, valueless stuff from which his predecessors had selected their
store came so easily and naturally to the scissors that after a week or
two he abandoned the idea of preparing original matter: it saved time
and labor, and nobody seemed to know the difference. These words, in
fact, came to describe his mental attitude toward all his work. He
had no pride in it. If he escaped curses for badly-read proofs, and
criticism for missing obvious matters of news, it was enough.
Seth did not arrive at this condition of mind without much inner
protest, or without sundry efforts to break through the crust of
perfunctory drudgery which was encasing him. At the start he bestowed
considerable thought and work upon an effort to brighten and improve,
by careful re-working of materials, one of the departments entrusted to
him, and, just when he expected praise, Tyler told him to stop it. Then
he tried to make his religious column a feature by discarding most
of the ancient matter which revolved so drolly in the Obago _Evening
Mercury_, and picking out eloquent bits from the sermons of great
contemporary preachers; but this elicited denominational protest from
certain pious subscribers, and Mr. Workman commanded a return to the old
rut.
But _the_ cruel humiliation came when Seth took to Mr. Samboye an
editorial paragraph he had written with great care. It was a political
paragraph, and Seth felt confident that it was exactly in the
_Chronicle’s_ line, and good writing as well. The Editor took it, after
regarding the young writer with a stony, half-surprised stare, and read
it over slowly. He delivered judgment upon it, in his habitual pomposity
of phrases: “This is markedly comprehensive in scope and clarified in
expression, Mr. Fairchild.” Then, as Seth’s heart was warming with a
sense of commendation and success, the Editor calmly tore the manuscript
in strips, dropped them in his waste-basket, and turned reflectively to
his newspaper.
Seth’s breath nearly left him: “Then you can’t use it;” he faltered. “I
thought it might do for an editorial paragraph.”
There was the faintest suggestion of a patronising smile on Mr.
Samboye’s broad, ruddy face.
“Oh, I am reminded, Mr. Fairchild,” he answered, with bland irrelevance;
“pray do not allow Porte to pass again with a small p, as you did
yesterday in the proof of my Turkish article. It should be capitalized
invariably.”
The beginner went back to his stall both humiliated and angry. The cool
insolence with which he had been reminded that he was a proof-reader,
and warned away from thoughts of the editorial page, enraged and
depressed him. He passed a bitter hour at his table, looking savagely
through the window at the automatic motions of the printer directly
opposite, but thinking evil thoughts of Samboye, and cursing the fate
which had led him into newspaper work. So uncomfortable did he make
himself by these reflections that it required a real effort to throw off
their effects when Watts came upstairs, and the two left the office for
the day. It was impossible not to relate his grievance.
Tom did not see its tragic side, and refused utterly to concede that
Seth ought to be cast down by it.
“That’s only Samboye’s way,” he said, lightly. “He won’t let any of the
fellows get on to the page, simply because he’s afraid they’ll outwrite
him. He’d rather do it all himself--and he does grind out an immense
load of stuff--than encourage any rivals. Besides, he never loses a
chance to snub youngsters. Don’t let it worry you for a minute. If he
sees that it does, he’ll only pile it on the thicker. In this business
you’ve got to have a hide on you like the behemoth of Holy Writ, or
you’ll keep raw all the while.”
Seth found some consolation in this view, and more still in Tom’s cheery
tone. The two young men spent the evening together--at Bismarck’s.
This came gradually but naturally to be Seth’s habitual evening resort.
It represented to him, indeed, all that was friendly and inviting in
Tecumseh society. He was able to recall dimly some of the notions of
coming social distinction he indulged in the farm days--dreams of a
handsome young editor who was in great request in the most refined and
luxurious home circles, who said the most charming things to beautiful
young ladies at parties and balls, who wavered in his mind between
wedding his employer’s daughter and taking a share in the paper, or
choosing some lowlier but more intellectual maid to wife, and leading
with her a halcyon and exaltedly literary career in a cottage--but they
were as unreal, as indistinct now as the dreams of night before last.
All the social bars seemed drawn against him as a matter of course.
This did not impress him as a hardship, because he was only vaguely
conscious of it, at first, and then grew into the habit of regarding it
as a thing to be grateful for. Tom Watts pointed out to him frequently
the advantage of being a Bohemian, of being free from all the fearsome,
undefined routine and responsibility of making calls, of dressing up
in the evening, and of dangling supine attendance upon girls and their
mammas. This “social racket,” the city editor said, might please some
people; Dent, for instance, seemed to like it. But for his part it
seemed quite the weakest thing a young man could go in for--entirely
incompatible with the robust and masculine character demanded in a
successful journalist.
This presented itself to Seth as an extremely sound position, and he
made it his own so willingly that very soon he began to take credit
to himself in his own eyes for having turned a deaf ear to the social
siren, and having deliberately rejected the advances of fashionable
Tecumseh. He grew, really, to believe that it was by preference, by
a wise resolution to preserve his freedom and individuality, that he
remained outside the mysterious, impalpable regions which were labelled
in his mind as “Society.”
On the other hand, there was no nonsense at Bismarck’s, or at the other
similar beer halls to which Tom introduced him. One dressed as one
chose, and did as one liked; seven-up or penochle provided just the
mental recreation a wearied literary brain demanded; and the fellows one
met there were cheerful, companionable young men, who likewise had no
nonsense about them, who put on no airs of superiority, and who glided
swiftly and jovially through the grades of acquaintanceship to intimacy.
Seth was greatly strengthened in his liking for this refuge from
loneliness in a strange city by what he saw of Arthur Dent, whom
Watts had prepared him to regard as the embodiment of the other and
strait-laced side.
This young man was not at all uncivil, but he was delicate, almost
effeminate in frame, wore eye-glasses, dressed with fastidious neatness,
never made any jokes or laughed heartily at those of others, and rarely
joined the daily lounge and smoke around Tyler’s table after the
paper had gone to press--and in all these things he grated upon Seth’s
sensitiveness. He was the one member of the staff whom Mr. Workman
seemed to like and whom Mr. Samboye never humiliated publicly by his
ponderous ridicule, and these were added grievances. He worked very
steadily and carefully, and was said to do a good deal of heavy reading
at home, evenings, in addition to the slavish routine of high social
duties in which Seth indefinitely understood him to be immersed. His
chief tasks were the book reviews, the editing of correspondence, and
the preparation of minor editorial paragraphs in a smaller type than
Mr. Samboye’s. Seth thought that his style, though correct and neat, was
thin and emasculated, and he came to associate this with his estimate of
the writer, and account for it by his habits and associations--which the
further confirmed him in his judgment as to the right way to live.
But there was something more than this. The first few days after his
return from his vacation, Dent had tried to be courteous and helpful
to the newcomer from the country, in his shy, undemonstrative way, and
Seth, despite his preconceived prejudice, had gone a little way on
the road to friendship. Then one night, as he and Watts were returning
arm-in-arm to their joint lodgings from Bismarck’s, a trifle unsteadily
perhaps, they had encountered Dent walking with a young lady, and Tom
had pleasantly accosted them--at least it seemed pleasantly to Seth--but
Dent had not taken it in the right spirit at the time, and had been
decidedly cool to Seth ever since. This was so unreasonable that the
country boy resented it deeply, and the two barely spoke to each other.
His relations with the others were less strained, but scarcely more
valuable in the way of companionship. Mr. Tyler did not seem to care
much for his company, and never asked him to go to the “Roast Beef”--a
sort of combination of club and saloon where he spent most of his
evenings, where poker was the chief amusement and whisky the principal
drink. From all Seth could learn, it was as well for him that he was not
invited there. As for Murtagh, all his associations outside the office
seemed to be with young men of his own race, who formed a coterie by
themselves, and frequented distinctively Irish resorts. Like most other
American cities Tecumseh had its large Irish and German elements, and
in nothing were ethnographic lines drawn so clearly as in the matter of
amusements. There were enough young Americans holding aloof from both
these foreign circles to constitute a small constituency for the “Roast
Beef,” but a far greater number had developed a liking for the German
places of resort, and drank beer and ate cheese and rye bread as if to
the manner born. Seth found himself in this class on his first step over
the threshold of city life; he enjoyed it, and he saw very little of the
others.
The two most important men on the _Chronicle_, Mr. Workman and Mr.
Samboye, were far removed from the plane upon which all these Bohemian
divisions were traced. They belonged to the Club--the Tuscarora Club.
Seth knew where the club house was--but he felt that this was all he was
ever likely to know about it. The first few days in Tecumseh had taught
him the hopelessness of his dream of associating with his employer.
Socially they were leagues apart at the outset, and if the distance did
not increase as weeks grew into months, at least Seth’s perception of it
did, which amounted to the same thing.
He did not so readily abandon the idea of being made a companion by
Samboye, but at last that vanished too. The Editor held himself very
high, and if he occasionally came down off his mountain top, his return
to those heights only served to emphasize their altitude. There were
conflicting stories about his salary. Among the lesser lights of the
editorial room it was commonly estimated at forty-five dollars a
week, but some of the printers had information that it was at least
fifty--which fatigued the imagination. Seth himself received nine
dollars, which his brother supplemented by five, and he found that he
was regarded as doing remarkably well for a beginner. But between this
condition and the state of Samboye with his great income, his fine house
on one of the best streets, his influential position in the city, and
his luxurious amusements at the Club, an impassable gulf yawned.
There is no pleasure in following further the details of the country
boy’s new life. He lost sight of his disappointment in the consolations
of a phase of city existence which does not show to advantage in
polite-pages. He did not become vicious or depraved.
The relentless treadmill of a daily paper forbade his becoming indolent.
By sheer force of contact his mind expanded, too, more than even he
suspected. But it was a formless, unprofitable expansion, which did not
help him to get out of the rut. He performed his work acceptably--at
least he rarely heard any criticisms upon it--lived a trifle ahead
of his small income, and ceased to even speculate on the chance of
promotion.
When, thirteen months after his advent in Tecumseh, the news came to
him from the farm that his father was dying, he obtained leave to go
home. Mr. Workman remarked to Mr. Samboye that afternoon:
“I shan’t mind much if Fairchild doesn’t come back.”
“Is that so? He seems to get through his work decently and inoffensively
enough. He will never set the North River ablaze, of course, but he is
civil and all that.”
“Yes, but I can’t see that there’s anything in him. Beside, I don’t
like his influence on Watts. I’m told you can find them together at
Bismarck’s every night in the week.”
“Of course, that makes it bad,” said Mr. Samboye.
Then the proprietor and the editor locked up their desks, went over to
the Club, and played pyramid pool till midnight.