chair.
"What is it?" asked the Picture; "what makes you so restless?"
Stuart regarded the Picture timidly for a moment before he spoke. "I
was just thinking," he said, doubtfully, "that we might run down after
all, and take a look in at the last act; it's not too late even now.
They're sure to run behind on the first night. And then," he urged,
"we can go around and see Seldon. You have never been behind the
scenes, have you? It's very interesting."
"No, I have not; but if we do," remonstrated the Picture,
pathetically, "you _know_ all those men will come trooping home
with us. You know they will."
"But that's very complimentary," said Stuart. "Why, I like my friends
to like my wife."
"Yes, but you know how they stay when they get here," she answered; "I
don't believe they ever sleep. Don't you remember the last supper you
gave me before we were married, when Mrs. Starr and you all were
discussing Mr. Seldon's play? She didn't make a move to go until
half-past two, and I was _that_ sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes
open."
"Yes," said Stuart, "I remember. I'm sorry. I thought it was very
interesting. Seldon changed the whole second act on account of what
she said. Well, after this," he laughed with cheerful desperation, "I
think I shall make up for the part of a married man in a pair of
slippers and a dressing-gown, and then perhaps I won't be tempted to
roam abroad at night."
"You must wear the gown they are going to give you at Oxford," said
the Picture, smiling placidly. "The one Aunt Lucy was telling me
about. Why do they give you a gown?" she asked. "It seems such an odd
thing to do."
"The gown comes with the degree, I believe," said Stuart.
"But why do they give _you_ a degree?" persisted the Picture;
"you never studied at Oxford, did you?"
Stuart moved slightly in his chair and shook his head. "I thought I
told you," he said, gently. "No, I never studied there. I wrote some
books on--things, and they liked them."
"Oh, yes, I remember now, you did tell me," said the Picture; "and I
told Aunt Lucy about it, and said we would be in England during the
season when you got your degree, and she said you must be awfully
clever to get it. You see--she does appreciate you, and you always
treat her so distantly."
"Do I?" said Stuart, quietly. "I'm sorry."
"Will you have your portrait painted in it?" asked the Picture.
"In what?"
"In the gown. You are not listening," said the Picture, reproachfully.
"You ought to. Aunt Lucy says it's a beautiful shade of red silk, and
very long. Is it?"
"I don't know," said Stuart. He shook his head, and dropping his chin
into his hands, stared coldly down into the fire. He tried to persuade
himself that he had been vainglorious, and that he had given too much
weight to the honor which the University of Oxford would bestow upon
him; that he had taken the degree too seriously, and that the
Picture's view of it was the view of the rest of the world. But he
could not convince himself that he was entirely at fault.
"Is it too late to begin on Guizot?" suggested his Picture, as an
alternative to his plan. "It sounds so improving."
"Yes, it is much too late," answered Stuart, decidedly. "Besides, I
don't want to be improved. I want to be amused, or inspired, or
scolded. The chief good of friends is that they do one of these three
things, and a wife should do all three."
"Which shall I do?" asked the Picture, smiling good-humoredly.
Stuart looked at the beautiful face and at the reclining figure of the
woman to whom he was to turn for sympathy for the rest of his life,
and felt a cold shiver of terror, that passed as quickly as it came.
He reached out his hand and placed it on the arm of the chair where
his wife's hand should have been, and patted the place kindly. He
would shut his eyes to everything but that she was good and sweet and
his wife. Whatever else she lacked that her beauty had covered up and
hidden, and the want of which had Iain unsuspected in their previous
formal intercourse, could not be mended now. He would settle his step
to hers, and eliminate all those interests from his life which were
not hers as well. He had chosen a beautiful idol, and not a companion,
for a wife. He had tried to warm his hands at the fire of a diamond.
Stuart's eyes closed wearily as though to shut out the memories of the
past, or the foreknowledge of what the future was sure to be. His head
sank forward on his breast, and with his hand shading his eyes, he
looked beyond, through the dying fire, into the succeeding years.
* * * * *
The gay little French clock on the table sounded the hour of midnight
briskly, with a pert, insistent clamor, and at the same instant a
boisterous and unruly knocking answered it from outside the library
door.
Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and surveyed the tiny clock
face with a startled expression of bewilderment and relief.
"Stuart!" his friends called impatiently from the hall. "Stuart, let
us in!" and without waiting further for recognition a merry company of
gentlemen pushed their way noisily into the room.
"Where the devil have you been?" demanded Weimer. "You don't deserve
to be spoken to at all after quitting us like that. But Seldon is so
good-natured," he went on, "that he sent us after you. It was a great
success, and he made a rattling good speech, and you missed the whole
thing; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. We've asked half the
people in front to supper--two stray Englishmen, all the Wilton girls
and their governor, and the chap that wrote the play. And Seldon and
his brother Sam are coming as soon as they get their make-up off.
Don't stand there like that, but hurry. What have you been doing?"
Stuart gave a nervous, anxious laugh. "Oh, don't ask me," he cried.
"It was awful. I've been trying an experiment, and I had to keep it up
until midnight, and--I'm so glad you fellows have come," he continued,
halting midway in his explanation. "I _was_ blue."
"You've been asleep in front of the fire," said young Sloane, "and
you've been dreaming."
"Perhaps," laughed Stuart, gayly, "perhaps. But I'm awake now, in any
event. Sloane, old man," he cried, dropping both hands on the
youngster's shoulders, "how much money have you? Enough to take me to
Gibraltar? They can cable me the rest."
"Hoorah!" shouted Sloane, waltzing from one end of the room to the
other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang.
"There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you
can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all
yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the
Winchester is the better gun."
"All right," returned Stuart, gayly, "and I'll try to prove that the
Italians don't know how to govern a native state. But who is giving
this supper, anyway?" he demanded. "That is the main thing--that's
what I want to know."
"You've got to pack, haven't you?" suggested Rives.
"I'll pack when I get back," said Stuart, struggling into his
greatcoat, and searching in his pockets for his gloves. "Besides, my
things are always ready and there's plenty of time; the boat doesn't
leave for six hours yet."
"We'll all come back and help," said Weimer.
"Then I'll never get away," laughed Stuart. He was radiant, happy, and
excited, like a boy back from school for the holidays. But when they
had reached the pavement, he halted and ran his hand down into his
pocket, as though feeling for his latch-key, and stood looking
doubtfully at his friends.
"What is it now?" asked Rives, impatiently. "Have you forgotten
something?"
Stuart looked back at the front door in momentary indecision.
"Ye-es," he answered. "I did forget something. But it doesn't matter,"
he added, cheerfully, taking Sloane's arm.
"Come on," he said, "and so Seldon made a hit, did he? I am glad--and
tell me, old man, how long will we have to wait at Gib for the P. & O.?"
Stuart's servant had heard the men trooping down the stairs, laughing
and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that
they had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the
library and closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room
of the tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph
sitting upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it
alone in the deserted library.
The cold night-air swept in through the open window and chilled the
silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into
the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in
the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely
expression, and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness.
THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter is the
one who works his way up. He holds that the only way to start is as a
printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to
graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer
take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real
reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting
Police Captains.
That is the old time journalist's idea of it. That is the way he was
trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is still a reporter.
If you train up a youth in this way, he will go into reporting with
too full a knowledge of the newspaper business, with no illusions
concerning it, and with no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and
justifiable impression that he is not paid enough for what he does.
And he will only do what he is paid to do.
Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does, because he does
not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives his time, his
health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his eating hours, and
sometimes his life, to get news for it. He thinks the sun rises only
that men may have light by which to read it. But if he has been in a
newspaper office from his youth up, he finds out before he becomes a
reporter that this is not so, and loses his real value. He should come
right out of the University where he has been doing "campus notes" for
the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work without
knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter's Point, and with
the idea that he is a Moulder of Public Opinion and that the Power of
the Press is greater than the Power of Money, and that the few lines
he writes are of more value in the Editor's eyes than is the column of
advertising on the last page, which they are not.
After three years--it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long--he
finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth and his
enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of miscellaneous knowledge,
the opportunity of personal encounter with all the greatest and most
remarkable men and events that have risen in those three years, and a
great fund of resource an patience. He will find that he has crowded
the experiences of the lifetime of the ordinary young business man,
doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short years; that he
has learned to think and to act quickly, to be patient and unmoved
when every one else has lost his head, actually or figuratively
speaking; to write as fast as another man can talk, and to be able to
talk with authority on matters of which other men do not venture even
to think until they have read what he has written with a copy-boy at
his elbow on the night previous.
It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand what
manner of man young Albert Gordon was.
Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had left Yale
when his last living relative died, and had taken the morning train
for New York, where they had promised him reportorial work on one of
the innumerable Greatest New York Dailies. He arrived at the office at
noon, and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come,
to Spuyten Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and everybody of
consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old reporters
hurried him to the office again with his "copy," and after he had
delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in
Murderers' Row, who could not talk anything else, but who had shown
some international skill in the use of a jimmy. And at eight, he
covered a flower-show in Madison Square Garden; and at eleven was sent
over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at
the losses to the insurance companies.
He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives, human
beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks
of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass
band in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he
had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day
followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President,
and borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like
to rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
discouraged.
And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North
Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul at
Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War, who
had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts
to save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and
with nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write
his novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and
though he did not know nor care much for his superior officer, he
agreed to go with him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his
friends and to make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted
with getting such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he
referred to him to his friends as "my attaché of legation"; nor did he
lessen that gentleman's dignity by telling any one that the attaché's
salary was to be five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only
fifteen hundred dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator
Rainsford, tried his best to get the amount raised, he was
unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the
'50's, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
President's, whose services during the campaign were important, but
whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been created consul to
Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than any other known
spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was known of the
island, and so difficult was communication with it, that no one knew
he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had
uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told
him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting
the consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor's orders
at his country's expense, than to serve his country at the expense of
his rheumatism.
Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
hundred miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San
Francisco to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that
was all that either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of
their new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to
stay only as long as he liked it, and to return to the States within a
few months if he found such a change of plan desirable.
As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of articles
with which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for this
purpose he purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had
read that Stanley did so, and added to these brass curtain-chains, and
about two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street
peddlers during the Constitutional Centennial Celebration in New York
City.
He also collected even more beautiful but less expensive decorations
for Christmas-trees, at a wholesale house on Park Row. These he hoped
to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other
curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already
pictured his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed
spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing, and
argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to
regain his place in it. But he thought the novel that he would write
while lost to the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his
temporary absence from it, and he expressly and impressively
stipulated that the editor should wire him if there was a war.
Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
learned with some concern that there was no regular communication with
Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sailboat for the
trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good.
It was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, relentless
persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill; and as there
was no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under
pieces of canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of
frequent twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale
at the empty waste of water.
"If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle
of the ocean for four years," he said, "I might just as well have done
something first to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who
bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is." Albert pulled
heavily on his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and
smiled.
"Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there," he said; "they say these
Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
see any one from the States."
"There will be a round of diplomatic dinners," said the consul, with
an attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two uniforms to wear at
them."
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of
the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low
line on the horizon.
"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an
island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and, as they drew
nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of
the mountains and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a
village of thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance
from the village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
"I wonder where the town is?" asked the consul, with a nervous glance
at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on the island
live?"
The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other
natives further back in the mountains, but that they were bad men who
fought and ate each other. The consul and his attaché of legation
gazed at the mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near
now, and could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them
black, and clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them.
They seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and
down the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of
the group they distinguished three men who they could see were white,
though they were clothed, like the others, simply in a shirt and a
short pair of trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a
run and disappeared among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he
recognized the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in
the water and began turning handsprings over the sand.
"That young gentleman, at least," said Albert, gravely, "seems pleased
to see us."
A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading and
swimming toward them, grinning and shouting and swinging their arms.
"I don't think it's quite safe, do you?" said the consul, looking out
wildly to the open sea. "You see, they don't know who I am."
A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the boat
carried him through the surf.
"How do you do?" said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the giant off
under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that the American consul
was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon did not wait to pick him up,
but jumped out and shook hands with the young man who had turned
handsprings, while the natives gathered about them in a circle and
chatted and laughed in delighted excitement.
"I'm awfully glad to see you," said the young man, eagerly. "My name's
Stedman. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. Where are you from?"
"New York," said Albert. "This," he added, pointing solemnly to
Captain Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, "is the
American consul to Opeki." The American consul to Opeki gave a wild
look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven and at the natives.
"See here, young man," he gasped, "is this all there is of Opeki?"
"The American consul?" said young Stedman, with a gasp of amazement,
and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. "Why, I never supposed they
would send another here; the last one died about fifteen years ago,
and there hasn't been one since. I've been living in the consul's
office with the Bradleys, but I'll move out, of course. I'm sure I'm
awfully glad to see you. It'll make it so much more pleasant for me."
"Yes," said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his rheumatic leg
over the boat; "that's why we came."
Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to be
anything but hospitable. "You are soaking wet, aren't you?" he said;
"and hungry, I guess. You come right over to the consul's office and
get on some other things."
He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their language,
and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and began to lift out
the trunks, and others ran off toward a large, stout old native, who
was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed
on his gray hair.
"They've gone to tell the King," said Stedman; "but you'd better get
something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to present you
properly."
"The King," said Captain Travis, with some awe; "is there a king?"