seemed insufficient in the light of new prosperity, and Kittrell bought
a large azalea, beautiful in its graceful spread of pink blooms.
"Where shall I send it?" asked the girl, whose cheeks were as pink as
azaleas themselves.
"I think I'll call a cab and take it to her myself," said Kittrell.
And she sighed over the romance of this rich young gentleman and the
girl of the azalea, who, no doubt, was as beautiful as the young woman
who was playing _Lottie, the Poor Saleslady_ at the Lyceum that very
week.
Kittrell and the azalea bowled along Claybourne Avenue; he leaned back
on the cushions, and adopted the expression of ennui appropriate to that
thoroughfare. Would Edith now prefer Claybourne Avenue? With ten
thousand a year they could, perhaps--and yet, at first it would be best
not to put on airs, but to go right on as they were, in the flat. Then
the thought came to him that now, as the cartoonist on the _Telegraph_,
his name would become as well known in Claybourne Avenue as it had been
in the homes of the poor and humble during his years on the _Post_. And
his thoughts flew to those homes where tired men at evening looked for
his cartoons and children laughed at his funny pictures. It gave him a
pang; he had felt a subtle bond between himself and all those thousands
who read the _Post_. It was hard to leave them. The _Post_ might be
yellow, but as the girl had said, yellow was a spiritual color, and the
_Post_ brought something into their lives--lives that were scorned by
the _Telegraph_ and by these people on the avenue. Could he make new
friends here where the cartoons he drew and the _Post_ that printed them
had been contemned, if not despised? His mind flew back to the dingy
office of the _Post_; to the boys there, the whole good-natured,
happy-go-lucky gang; and to Hardy--ah, Hardy!--who had been so good to
him, and given him his big chance, had taken such pains and interest,
helping him with ideas and suggestions, criticism and sympathy. To tell
Hardy that he was going to leave him, here on the eve of the
campaign--and Clayton, the mayor, he would have to tell him, too--oh,
the devil! Why must he think of these things now?
After all, when he had reached home, and had run up-stairs with the news
and the azalea, Edith did not seem delighted.
"But, dearie, business is business," he urged, "and we need the money!"
"Yes, I know; doubtless you're right. Only please don't say 'business
is business;' it isn't like you, and--"
"But think what it will mean--ten thousand a year!"
"Oh, Neil, I've lived on ten thousand a year before, and I never had
half the fun that I had when we were getting along on twelve hundred."
"Yes, but then we were always dreaming of the day when I'd make a lot;
we lived on that hope, didn't we?"
Edith laughed. "You used to say we lived on love."
"You're not serious." He turned to gaze moodily out of the window. And
then she left the azalea, and perched on the flat arm of his chair.
"Dearest," she said, "I am serious. I know all this means to you. We're
human, and we don't like to 'chip at crusts like Hindus,' even for the
sake of youth and art. I never had illusions about love in a cottage and
all that. Only, dear, I have been happy, so very happy, with you,
because--well, because I was living in an atmosphere of honest purpose,
honest ambition, and honest desire to do some good thing in the world. I
had never known such an atmosphere before. At home, you know, father and
Uncle James and the boys--well, it was all money, money, money with
them, and they couldn't understand why I--"
"Could marry a poor newspaper artist? That's just the point."
She put her hand to his lips.
"Now, dear! If they couldn't understand, so much the worse for them. If
they thought it meant sacrifice to me, they were mistaken. I have been
happy in this little flat; only--" she leaned back and inclined her head
with her eyes asquint--"only the paper in this room is atrocious; it's a
typical landlord's selection--McGaw picked it out. You see what it means
to be merely rich."
She was so pretty thus that he kissed her, and then she went on:
"And so, dear, if I didn't seem to be as impressed and delighted as you
hoped to find me, it is because I was thinking of Mr. Hardy and the
poor, dear common little _Post_, and then--of Mr. Clayton. Did you think
of him?"
"Yes."
"You'll have to--to cartoon him?"
"I suppose so."
The fact he had not allowed himself to face was close to both of them,
and the subject was dropped until, just as he was going down-town--this
time to break the news to Hardy--he went into the room he sarcastically
said he might begin to call his studio, now that he was getting ten
thousand a year, to look for a sketch he had promised Nolan for the
sporting page. And there on his drawing-board was an unfinished cartoon,
a drawing of the strong face of John Clayton. He had begun it a few days
before to use on the occasion of Clayton's renomination. It had been a
labor of love, and Kittrell suddenly realized how good it was. He had
put into it all of his belief in Clayton, all of his devotion to the
cause for which Clayton toiled and sacrificed, and in the simple lines
he experienced the artist's ineffable felicity; he had shown how good,
how noble, how true a man Clayton was. All at once he realized the
sensation the cartoon would produce, how it would delight and hearten
Clayton's followers, how it would please Hardy, and how it would touch
Clayton. It would be a tribute to the man and the friendship, but now a
tribute broken, unfinished. Kittrell gazed a moment longer, and in that
moment Edith came.
"The dear, beautiful soul!" she exclaimed softly. "Neil, it is
wonderful. It is not a cartoon; it is a portrait. It shows what you
might do with a brush."
Kittrell could not speak, and he turned the drawing-board to the wall.
When he had gone, Edith sat and thought--of Neil, of the new position,
of Clayton. He had loved Neil, and been so proud of his work; he had
shown a frank, naive pleasure in the cartoons Neil had made of him. That
last time he was there, thought Edith, he had said that without Neil the
"good old cause," as he called it, using Whitman's phrase, could never
have triumphed in that town. And now, would he come again? Would he ever
stand in that room and, with his big, hearty laugh, clasp an arm around
Neil's shoulder, or speak of her in his good friendly way as "the little
woman?" Would he come now, in the terrible days of the approaching
campaign, for rest and sympathy--come as he used to come in other
campaigns, worn and weary from all the brutal opposition, the
vilification and abuse and mud-slinging? She closed her eyes. She could
not think that far.
Kittrell found the task of telling Hardy just as difficult as he
expected it to be, but by some mercy it did not last long. Explanation
had not been necessary; he had only to make the first hesitating
approaches, and Hardy understood. Hardy was, in a way, hurt; Kittrell
saw that, and rushed to his own defense:
"I hate to go, old man. I don't like it a little bit--but, you know,
business is business, and we need the money."
He even tried to laugh as he advanced this last conclusive reason, and
Hardy, for all he showed in voice or phrase, may have agreed with him.
"It's all right, Kit," he said. "I'm sorry; I wish we could pay you
more, but--well, good luck."
That was all. Kittrell gathered up the few articles he had at the
office, gave Nolan his sketch, bade the boys good-by--bade them good-by
as if he were going on a long journey, never to see them more--and then
he went.
After he had made the break it did not seem so bad as he had
anticipated. At first things went on smoothly enough. The campaign had
not opened, and he was free to exercise his talents outside the
political field. He drew cartoons dealing with banal subjects, touching
with the gentle satire of his humorous pencil foibles which all the
world agreed about, and let vital questions alone. And he and Edith
enjoyed themselves: indulged oftener in things they loved; went more
frequently to the theater; appeared at recitals; dined now and then
downtown. They began to realize certain luxuries they had not known for
a long time--some he himself had never known, some that Edith had not
known since she left her father's home to become his bride. In more
subtle ways, too, Kittrell felt the change: there was a sense of larger
leisure; the future beamed with a broader and brighter light; he formed
plans, among which the old dream of going ere long to Paris for serious
study took its dignified place. And then there was the sensation his
change had created in the newspaper world; that the cartoons signed
"Kit," which formerly appeared in the _Post_, should now adorn the broad
page of the _Telegraph_ was a thing to talk about at the press club; the
fact of his large salary got abroad in that little world as well, and,
after the way of that world, managed to exaggerate itself, as most facts
did. He began to be sensible of attentions from men of prominence--small
things, mere nods in the street, perhaps, or smiles in the theater
foyer, but enough to show that they recognized him. What those children
of the people, those working-men and women who used to be his unknown
and admiring friends in the old days on the _Post_, thought of
him--whether they missed him, whether they deplored his change as an
apostasy or applauded it as a promotion--he did not know. He did not
like to think about it.
But March came, and the politicians began to bluster like the season.
Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the
first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing
editor of the _Telegraph_, had conceived it, and Kittrell had worked on
it that day in sickness of heart. Every line of this new presentation of
Clayton had cut him like some biting acid; but he had worked on, trying
to reassure himself with the argument that he was a mere agent, devoid
of personal responsibility. But it had been hard, and when Edith, after
her custom, had asked to see it, he had said:
"Oh, you don't want to see it; it's no good."
"Is it of--him?" she had asked.
And when he nodded she had gone away without another word. Now, as he
hurried through the crowded streets, he was conscious that it was no
good indeed; and he was divided between the artist's regret and the
friend's joy in the fact. But it made him tremble. Was his hand to
forget its cunning? And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice, and
there beside him, with his hand on his shoulder, stood the mayor.
"Why, Neil, my boy, how are you?" he said, and he took Kittrell's hand
as warmly as ever. For a moment Kittrell was relieved, and then his
heart sank; for he had a quick realization that it was the coward within
him that felt the relief, and the man the sickness. If Clayton had
reproached him, or cut him, it would have made it easier; but Clayton
did none of these things, and Kittrell was irresistibly drawn to the
subject himself.
"You heard of my--new job?" he asked.
"Yes," said Clayton, "I heard."
"Well--" Kittrell began.
"I'm sorry," Clayton said.
"So was I," Kittrell hastened to say. "But I felt it--well, a duty, some
way--to Edith. You know--we--need the money." And he gave the cynical
laugh that went with the argument.
"What does _she_ think? Does she feel that way about it?"
Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with
embarrassment, for Clayton's blue eyes were on him, those eyes that
could look into men and understand them so.
"Of course you know," Kittrell went on nervously, "there is nothing
personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told; we
obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the paper we
have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a red-hot
free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the _Times_--he
went over to the _Telegraph_, you remember, and writes all those
protection arguments."
The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the
ethics of his profession.
"Of course, you know I'm for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I've
always been. I'm going to vote for you."
This did not seem to interest the mayor, either.
"And, maybe, you know--I thought, perhaps," he snatched at this bright
new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time; "that I might
help you by my cartoons in the _Telegraph_; that is, I might keep them
from being as bad as they might--"
"But that wouldn't be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil," the
mayor said.
Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable
business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.
"Well, good-by, my boy," said the mayor, as they parted. "Remember me to
the little woman."
Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in
his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other hats
in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in deep
depression.
When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his
head this side and that, puffed his briar pipe, and finally said:
"I'm afraid this is hardly up to you. This figure of Clayton, here--it
hasn't got the stuff in it. You want to show him as he _is_. We want the
people to know what a four-flushing, hypocritical, demagogical
blatherskite he is--with all his rot about the people and their damned
rights!"
Benson was all unconscious of the inconsistency of having concern for a
people he so despised, and Kittrell did not observe it, either. He was
on the point of defending Clayton, but he restrained himself and
listened to Benson's suggestions. He remained at the office for two
hours, trying to change the cartoon to Benson's satisfaction, with a
growing hatred of the work and a disgust with himself that now and then
almost drove him to mad destruction. He felt like splashing the piece
with India ink, or ripping it with his knife. But he worked on, and
submitted it again. He had failed, of course; failed to express in it
that hatred of a class which Benson unconsciously disguised as a hatred
of Clayton, a hatred which Kittrell could not express because he did not
feel it; and he failed because art deserts her devotees when they are
false to truth.
"Well, it'll have to do," said Benson, as he looked it over; "but let's
have a little more to the next one. Damn it! I wish I could draw. I'd
cartoon the crook!"
In default of which ability, Benson set himself to write one of those
savage editorials in which he poured out on Clayton that venom of which
he seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply.
But on one point Benson was right: Kittrell was not up to himself. As
the campaign opened, as the city was swept with the excitement of it,
with meetings at noon-day and at night, office-seekers flying about in
automobiles, walls covered with pictures of candidates, hand-bills
scattered in the streets to swirl in the wild March winds, and men
quarreling over whether Clayton or Ellsworth should be mayor, Kittrell
had to draw a political cartoon each day; and as he struggled with his
work, less and less the old joy came to cheer and spur him on. To read
the ridicule, the abuse, which the _Telegraph_ heaped on Clayton, the
distortion of facts concerning his candidature, the unfair reports of
his meetings, sickened him, and more than all, he was filled with
disgust as he tried to match in caricature these libels of the man he so
loved and honored. It was bad enough to have to flatter Clayton's
opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to
sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man,
attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the
smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy;
but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him
worse--disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few who
knew the tragedy of Kittrell's soul, there was pity. And thus his work
declined in value; lacking all sincerity, all faith in itself or its
purpose, it became false, uncertain, full of jarring notes, and, in
short, never once rang true. As for Edith, she never discussed his work
now; she spoke of the campaign little, and yet he knew she was deeply
concerned, and she grew hot with resentment at the methods of the
_Telegraph_. Her only consolation was derived from the _Post_, which of
course, supported Clayton; and the final drop of bitterness in
Kittrell's cup came one evening when he realized that she was following
with sympathetic interest the cartoons in that paper.
For the _Post_ had a new cartoonist, Banks, a boy whom Hardy had picked
up somewhere and was training to the work Kittrell had laid down. To
Kittrell there was a cruel fascination in the progress Banks was making;
he watched it with a critical, professional eye, at first with
amusement, then with surprise, and now at last, in the discovery of
Edith's interest, with a keen jealousy of which he was ashamed. The boy
was crude and untrained; his work was not to be compared with
Kittrell's, master of line that he was, but Kittrell saw that it had the
thing his work now lacked, the vital, primal thing--sincerity, belief,
love. The spark was there, and Kittrell knew how Hardy would nurse that
spark and fan it, and keep it alive and burning until it should
eventually blaze up in a fine white flame. And Kittrell realized, as the
days went by, that Banks' work was telling, and that his own was
failing. He had, from the first missed the atmosphere of the _Post_,
missed the _camaraderie_ of the congenial spirits there, animated by a
common purpose, inspired and led by Hardy, whom they all loved--loved as
he himself once loved him, loved as he loved him still--and dared not
look him in the face when they met!
He found the atmosphere of the _Telegraph_ alien and distasteful. There
all was different; the men had little joy in their work, little interest
in it, save perhaps the newspaper man's inborn love of a good story or a
beat. They were all cynical, without loyalty or faith; they secretly
made fun of the _Telegraph_, of its editors and owners; they had no
belief in its cause; and its pretensions to respectability, its parade
of virtue, excited only their derision. And slowly it began to dawn on
Kittrell that the great moral law worked always and everywhere, even on
newspapers, and that there was reflected inevitably and logically in the
work of the men on that staff the hatred, the lack of principle, the
bigotry and intolerance of its proprietors; and this same lack of
principle tainted and made meretricious his own work, and enervated the
editorials so that the _Telegraph_, no matter how carefully edited or
how dignified in typographical appearance, was, nevertheless, without
real influence in the community.
Meanwhile Clayton was gaining ground. It was less than two weeks before
election. The campaign waxed more and more bitter, and as the forces
opposed to him foresaw defeat, they became ugly in spirit, and
desperate. The _Telegraph_ took on a tone more menacing and brutal, and
Kittrell knew that the crisis had come. The might of the powers massed
against Clayton appalled Kittrell; they thundered at him through many
brazen mouths, but Clayton held on his high way unperturbed. He was
speaking by day and night to thousands. Such meetings he had never had
before. Kittrell had visions of him before those immense audiences in
halls, in tents, in the raw open air of that rude March weather, making
his appeals to the heart of the great mass. A fine, splendid, romantic
figure he was, striking to the imagination, this champion of the
people's cause, and Kittrell longed for the lost chance. Oh, for one day
on the _Post_ now!
One morning at breakfast, as Edith read the _Telegraph_, Kittrell saw
the tears well slowly in her brown eyes.
"Oh," she said, "it is shameful!" She clenched her little fists. "Oh, if
I were only a man I'd--" She could not in her impotent feminine rage say
what she would do; she could only grind her teeth. Kittrell bent his
head over his plate; his coffee choked him.
"Dearest," she said presently, in another tone, "tell me, how is he? Do
you--ever see him? Will he win?"
"No, I never see him. But he'll win; I wouldn't worry."
"He used to come here," she went on, "to rest a moment, to escape from
all this hateful confusion and strife. He is killing himself! And they
aren't worth it--those ignorant people--they aren't worth such
sacrifices."
He got up from the table and turned away, and then realizing quickly,
she flew to his side and put her arms about his neck and said:
"Forgive me, dearest, I didn't mean--only--"
"Oh, Edith," he said, "this is killing me. I feel like a dog."
"Don't dear; he is big enough, and good enough; he will understand."
"Yes; that only makes it harder, only makes it hurt the more."
That afternoon, in the car, he heard no talk but of the election; and
down-town, in a cigar store where he stopped for cigarettes, he heard
some men talking mysteriously, in the hollow voice of rumor, of some
sensation, some scandal. It alarmed him, and as he went into the office
he met Manning, the _Telegraph_'s political man.
"Tell me, Manning," Kittrell said, "how does it look?"
"Damn bad for us."
"For us?"
"Well, for our mob of burglars and second story workers here--the gang
we represent." He took a cigarette from the box Kittrell was opening.
"And will he win?"
"Will he win?" said Manning, exhaling the words on the thin level stream
of smoke that came from his lungs. "Will he win? In a walk, I tell you.
He's got 'em beat to a standstill right now. That's the dope."
"But what about this story of--"
"Aw, that's all a pipe-dream of Burns'. I'm running it in the morning,
but it's nothing; it's a shine. They're big fools to print it at all.
But it's their last card; they're desperate. They won't stop at
anything, or at any crime, except those requiring courage. Burns is in
there with Benson now; so is Salton, and old man Glenn, and the rest of
the bunco family. They're framing it up. When I saw old Glenn go in,
with his white side-whiskers, I knew the widow and the orphan were in
danger again, and that he was going bravely to the front for 'em. Say,
that young Banks is comin', isn't he? That's a peach, that cartoon of
his to-night."
Kittrell went on down the hall to the art-room to wait until Benson
should be free. But it was not long until he was sent for, and as he
entered the managing editor's room he was instantly sensible of the
somber atmosphere of a grave and solemn council of war. Benson
introduced him to Glenn, the banker, to Salton, the party boss, and to
Burns, the president of the street-car company; and as Kittrell sat down
he looked about him, and could scarcely repress a smile as he recalled
Manning's estimate of Glenn. The old man sat there, as solemn and
unctuous as ever he had in his pew at church. Benson, red of face, was
more plainly perturbed, but Salton was as reserved, as immobile, as
inscrutable as ever, his narrow, pointed face, with its vulpine
expression, being perhaps paler than usual. Benson had on his desk
before him the cartoon Kittrell had finished that day.
"Mr. Kittrell," Benson began, "we've been talking over the political
situation, and I was showing these gentlemen this cartoon. It isn't, I
fear, in your best style; it lacks the force, the argument, we'd like
just at this time. That isn't the _Telegraph_ Clayton, Mr. Kittrell." He
pointed with the amber stem of his pipe. "Not at all. Clayton is a
strong, smart, unscrupulous, dangerous man! We've reached a crisis in
this campaign; if we can't turn things in the next three days, we're
lost, that's all; we might as well face it. To-morrow we make an
important revelation concerning the character of Clayton, and we want to
follow it up the morning after by a cartoon that will be a stunner, a
clencher. We have discussed it here among ourselves, and this is our
idea."
Benson drew a crude, bald outline, indicating the cartoon they wished
Kittrell to draw. The idea was so coarse, so brutal, so revolting, that
Kittrell stood aghast, and, as he stood, he was aware of Salton's little
eyes fixed on him. Benson waited; they all waited.
"Well," said Benson, "what do you think of it?"