Chapter 22

“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.”

XXV.

When they were once out under the stars, Bartley, who still felt his brain clear, said that he would not take his friend home at once, but would show him where he visited when he first came to Boston. The other agreed to the indulgence of this sentiment, and they set out to find Rumford Street together.

“You've heard of old man Halleck,--Lestor Neather Interest? Tha's place,--there's where I stayed. His son's my frien',--damn stuck-up, supercilious beast he is, too! _I_ do' care f'r him! I'll show you place, so's't you'll know it when you come to it,--'f I can ever find it.”

They walked up and down the street, looking, while Bartley poured his sorrows into the ear of his friend, who grew less and less responsive, and at last ceased from his side altogether. Bartley then dimly perceived that he was himself sitting on a door-step, and that his head was hanging far down between his knees, as if he had been sleeping in that posture.

“Locked out,--locked out of my own door, and by my own wife!” He shed tears, and fell asleep again. From time to time he woke, and bewailed himself to Ricker as a poor boy who had fought his own way; he owned that he had made mistakes, as who had not? Again he was trying to convince Squire Gaylord that they ought to issue a daily edition of the Equity Free Press, and at the same time persuading Mr. Halleck to buy the Events for him, and let him put it on a paying basis. He shivered, sighed, hiccupped, and was dozing off again, when Henry Bird knocked him down, and he fell with a cry, which at last brought to the door the uneasy sleeper, who had been listening to him within, and trying to realize his presence, catching his voice in waking intervals, doubting it, drowsing when it ceased, and then catching it and losing it again.

“Hello, here! What do you want? Hubbard! Is it you? What in the world are you doing here?”

“Halleck,” said Bartley, who was unsteadily straightening himself upon his feet, “glad to find you at home. Been looking for your house all night. Want to introduce you to partic-ic-ular friend of mine. Mr. Halleck, Mr. ----. Curse me if I know your name--”

“Hold on a minute,” said Halleck.

He ran into the house for his hat and coat, and came out again, closing the door softly after him. He found Bartley in the grip of a policeman, whom he was asking his name, that he might introduce him to his friend Halleck.

“Do you know this man, Mr. Halleck?” asked the policeman.

“Yes,--yes, I know him,” said Ben, in a low voice. “Let's get him away quietly, please. He's all right. It's the first time I ever saw him so. Will you help me with him up to Johnson's stable? I'll get a carriage there and take him home.”

They had begun walking Bartley along between them; he dozed, and paid no attention to their talk.

The policeman laughed. “I was just going to run him in, when you came out. You didn't come a minute too soon.”

They got Bartley to the stable, and he slept heavily in one of the chairs in the office, while the ostlers were putting the horses to the carriage. The policeman remained at the office-door, looking in at Bartley, and philosophizing the situation to Halleck. “Your speakin' about its bein' the first time you ever saw him so made me think 't I rather help take home a regular habitual drunk to his family, any day, than a case like this. They always seem to take it so much harder the first time. Boards with his mother, I presume?”

“He's married,” said Halleck? sadly. “He has a house of his own.”

“Well!” said the policeman.

Bartley slept all the way to Clover Street, and when the carriage stopped at his door, they had difficulty in waking him sufficiently to get him out.

“Don't come in, please,” said Halleck to the policeman, when this was done. “The man will carry you back to your beat. Thank you, ever so much!”

“All right, Mr. Halleck. Don't mention it,” said the policeman, and leaned back in the hack with an air of luxury, as it rumbled softly away.

Halleck remained on the pavement with Bartley falling limply against him in the dim light of the dawn. “What you want? What you doing with me?” he demanded with sullen stupidity.

“I've got you home, Hubbard. Here we are at your house.” He pulled him across the pavement to the threshold, and put his hand on the bell, but the door was thrown open before he could ring, and Marcia stood there, with her face white, and her eyes red with watching and crying.

“Oh, Bartley! oh, Bartley!” she sobbed. “Oh, Mr. Halleck! what is it? Is he hurt? I did it,--yes, I did it! It's my fault! Oh! will he die? Is he sick?”

“He isn't very well. He'd better go to bed,” said Halleck.

“Yes, yes! I will help you upstairs with him.”

“Do' need any help,” said Bartley, sulkily. “Go upstairs myself.”

He actually did so, with the help of the hand-rail, Marcia running before, to open the door, and smooth the pillows which her head had not touched, and Halleck following him to catch him if he should fall. She unlaced his shoes and got them off, while Halleck removed his coat.

“Oh, Bartley! where do you feel badly, dear? Oh I what shall I do?” she moaned, as he tumbled himself on the bed, and lapsed into a drunken stupor.

“Better--better come out, Mrs. Hubbard,” said Halleck. “Better let him alone, now. You only make him worse, talking to him.”

Quelled by the mystery of his manner, she followed him out and down the stairs. “Oh, _do_ tell me what it is,” she implored, in a low voice, “or I shall go wild! But tell me, and I can bear it! I can bear anything if I know what it is!” She came close to him in her entreaty, and fixed her eyes beseechingly on his, while she caught his hand in both of hers. “Is he--is he insane?”

“He isn't quite in his right mind, Mrs. Hubbard,” Halleck began, softly releasing himself, and retreating a little from her; but she pursued him, and put her hand on his arm.

“Oh, then go for the doctor,--go instantly! Don't lose a minute! I shall not be afraid to stay alone. Or if you think I'd better not, I will go for the doctor myself.”

“No, no,” said Halleck, smiling sadly: the case certainly had its ludicrous side. “He doesn't need a doctor. You mustn't think of calling a doctor. Indeed you mustn't. He'll come out all right of himself. If you sent for a doctor, it would make him very angry.”

She burst into tears. “Well, I will do what you say,” she cried. “It would never have happened, if it hadn't been for me. I want to tell you what I did,” she went on wildly. “I want to tell--”

“Please don't tell me anything, Mrs. Hubbard! It will all come right--and very soon. It isn't anything to be alarmed about. He'll be well in a few hours. I--ah--Good by.” He had found his cane, and he made a limp toward the door, but she swiftly interposed herself.

“Why,” she panted, in mixed reproach and terror, “you're not going away? You're not going to leave me before Bartley is well? He may get worse,--he may die! You mustn't go, Mr. Halleck!”

“Yes, I must,--I can't stay,--I oughtn't to stay,--it won't do! He won't get worse, he won't die.” The perspiration broke out on Halleck's face, which he lifted to hers with a distress as great as her own.

She only answered, “I can't let you go; it would kill me. I wonder at your wanting to go.”