Chapter 10

Mrs. Carnarvon’s opinion of the _News-Record_ and its recent performances fairly represented that of the fashionable and the very rich. They read it, as they never did before, because it interested them. They could not deny that what it said was true; that is, they could not deny it to their own minds, although they did vigorously deny it publicly. Those who were attacked directly or indirectly, or expected to be attacked, denounced the paper as an “outrage,” a “disgrace to the city,” a “specimen of the journalism of the gutter.” Many who were not in sympathy with the men or the methods assailed thought that its course was “inexpedient,” “tended to increase discontent among the lower classes,” “weakened the influence of the better classes.” Only a few of the “triumphant classes” saw the real value and benefit of the _News-Record’s_ frank attacks upon greed and hypocrisy, saw that these attacks were not dangerous or demagogical because they were just and were combined with a careful avoidance of encouragement to the lazy, the envious, the incompetent and the ignorant.

Fortunately for Howard’s peace, that eminent New York “multi,” Samuel Jocelyn, for whom Coulter had the highest respect, was of this last class. When Howard began, Coulter was at Aiken where Jocelyn had a cottage. He had never been able to make headway with Jocelyn, and Mrs. Jocelyn deigned to give him and Mrs. Coulter only the coldest of cold nods. Just as Coulter had become so agitated by Howard’s radical course that he was preparing to go to New York to remonstrate with him, Jocelyn called.

“I came to thank you for what you are doing with your paper,” he said cordially. “It seems to me that all intelligent men who are not blind to their own ultimate interests ought to stand by you. I can’t tell you how much I admire your frankness and honesty. And you draw the line just right. You attack plunder, you defend property. Will your wife and you dine with us this evening?”

Coulter postponed his trip to New York.

On the last day of the first three months the circulation of the _News-Record_ was 147,253--an increase of 42,150 over what it was on the day Howard took charge; its advertising had increased twelve per cent; its net profits for the quarter were seventy-five thousand dollars as against fifty-seven thousand for the preceding quarter.

“Very good indeed,” was Stokely’s comment.

“Another quarter like this,” said Howard, “and I’m going to ask you to let me increase expenses a thousand dollars a week to illustrate the paper.”

“We’ll talk that over with Coulter. Personally I like this ‘yellow-journalism’--when it’s done intelligently. I always told Coulter we’d have to come to it. It’s only common sense to make a paper easy reading. Then, too, we can have a great deal more influence--in fact, we have already. I’m getting what I want up at Albany this winter much cheaper.”

Howard winced. “He made me feel like a blackmailer,” he said to himself when Stokely had gone. “And I suppose these fellows do look on me as a new Malcolm with up-to-date tricks. Well, they will see, they will see.”

He tried to go on with his work, but Stokely’s cynical words persistently interrupted him. Why had he not squarely challenged Stokely then and there? Why had he only winced where a year ago he would have demanded an explanation?

He hated to confess it to himself, he made every effort to smother it, but the thought still stared him in the face--“I am not so strong in my ideals of personal character as I was a year ago.”

The fact that his present course was profitable gave him, he felt, more pleasure than the fact that it was right. If the alternative of wealth and power with self-abasement or poverty, obscurity with self-respect were put to him now, what would he decide? Would he give up his prospects, his hopes of Marian and of an easy career? He was afraid to answer. He contented himself with one of his habitual evasions--“I will settle that when the time comes. No, Stokely’s remark did not make a crisis. If the crisis ever does come, surely I will act like a man. I’ll be securer then, more necessary to this pair of plunderers, able to make better terms for myself. In practical life, it is necessary to sacrifice something in order to succeed.”

But Stokely’s words and his own silence and the real reasons for his changing ideals and for his cowardice continued to annoy him.

Every day he came down town planning for a better newspaper the next morning than they had ever made before. And his vigour, his enthusiasm permeated the entire office. He went from one news department to another, suggesting, asking for suggestions, praising, criticising judiciously and with the greatest consideration for vanity. He talked with the reporters, urging them on by showing keen interest in them and their work, and intimate knowledge of what they were doing. And he dictated every day telegrams to correspondents, thanking them for any conspicuously good stories they had telegraphed in, adding something to the compensation of those who were paid by space and made little.

If his work had not been his amusement the long hours, the constant application, would have broken him down. But he had no interests outside the office and he got his mental recreation by shifting his mind from one department to another.

In June his salary was increased to twenty-five thousand a year and his last lingering feeling of financial insecurity disappeared. For the first time in his life he felt strong enough to undertake a serious responsibility, to give hostages to fortune without fear of being unable to keep faith. He learned from Mrs. Carnarvon that Marian was returning on the _Oceanic_ on the ninth of July, and he accepted a Saturday-to-Monday invitation to Newport for the twelfth of July. It was from Segur that he got the news that Danvers was in Japan and was not returning until the autumn.

On the ninth of July, from the window of his office, he saw the _Oceanic_ steam up the bay and up the river to her pier. He sent down a request that the ship-news reporter be sent up as soon as he returned. “Is it a good story?” he asked when the reporter, Blackwell, entered. “Was there anybody on board?”

“A lot of swell people,” the young man answered; “all the women got up in the latest Paris gowns.”

“Did you notice whether Mrs. Provost came?”

“Came? Well, rather, with two French maids chattering and chasing after her. And there was a tall girl with her, a stunner, a girl she called ‘Marian, my dear.’”

Howard stopped him with “Thank you. Don’t write anything about them.”

“It was the best thing I saw--the funniest.”

“Well--don’t use the names.”

Young Blackwell turned to go. “Oh, I see--friends of yours,” he smiled. “Very well. I’ll keep ‘em out.”

Howard flushed and called him back. “Go ahead,” he said. “Write just what you were going to. Of course you wouldn’t write anything that was not fair and truthful. We don’t ‘play favourites’ here. Forget what I said.”

And so it came to pass that Mrs. Provost, half pleased, half indignant, said to Miss Trevor as they sat in the drawing room of the Pullman on the way to Newport the next day: “Just look at this, Marian dear, in the horrid _News-Record_. And it used to be such a nice paper with that slimy Coulter bowing and scraping to everybody.”

“This” was Mrs. Provost and her dogs and her maids and her asides to “Marian dear,” described with accuracy and a keen sense of the ludicrous.

“It’s too dreadful,” she continued. “There is no such thing as privacy in this country. The newspapers are making us,” with a slight accent on the pronoun, “as common and public as tenement-house people.”

“Yes,” Miss Trevor answered absently. “But why read the newspapers? I never could get interested in them, though I’ve tried.”

XVII.

A WOMAN AND A WARNING.

On the evening of Howard’s arrival at Newport, Mrs. Carnarvon was having a few people in to dine. He had just time to dress and so saw no one until he descended to the reception room.

“You are to take in Marian,” said his hostess, going with him to where Miss Trevor was sitting, her back to the door and her attention apparently absorbed by the man facing her.

“Here’s Mr. Howard, Marian,” Mrs. Carnarvon interrupted. “Come with me, Willie. Your lady is over here and we’re going in directly.”

Marian saw that Howard was looking at her in the straight, frank fashion she remembered and liked so well. “I’ve come for you,” he said.

“Yes, you are to take me in,” she evaded, her look even lamer than her words.

“You know what I mean.” He was smiling, his heart in his eyes, as if the dozen people were not about them.

“I see you have not changed,” she laughed, answering his look in kind.

“Changed? I’m revolutionized. I was blind and now I see. I was paralyzed and behold, I walk. I was weak and lo, I am strong--strong enough for two, if necessary.”

“Now, hasn’t it occurred to you that I might possibly have something to say about my own fate?”

“You? Why, you had everything to say. I reasoned it all out with you. You simply can’t add anything to the case I made you make out for yourself when I talked it over with you. I made you protest very vigorously.”

“Well, what did I say--that is, what did you make me say?”

“You said you were engaged--pledged to another--that you could not draw back without dishonour. And I answered that no engagement could bind you to become the wife of a man you did not love; that no moral code could hold you to such a sin; that no code of honour could command you to permit a man to degrade himself and you. Then you pleaded that you were not sure you liked my kind of a life, that you feared you wanted wealth and a great establishment and social leadership and--and all that.”

“Did I?” Marian said with exaggerated astonishment.

“You did indeed. You were perfectly open with me. You let me see all that part of you which we try to keep concealed and fancy we are concealing--all that one really feels and wishes and thinks as distinguished from what one fancies he ought to feel and wish and think.”

“I wonder that you cared, after a glance behind that curtain.”

“Oh, but I like what is behind that curtain best of all. The very human things are there. They make me feel so at home.”

Dinner was announced and it was not until the second course that he had a chance to resume. Then he began as if there had been no interval:

“You said--”

Marian laughed and looked at him--a flash of her luminous blue-green eyes--and was looking away again with her usual expression. “You needn’t tell me the rest. It doesn’t matter what I said. I’ve had you with me wherever I went. You never doubted my--my caring, did you?”

“No. I couldn’t doubt you. If you were the sort of woman a man could doubt, you wouldn’t be the sort of woman I could love. And you know it isn’t vanity that makes me sure. I often wonder how you happened to care for such a--but I must not attack any one whom you like so well. No, I knew you cared by the same instinct that makes you know that I care for you.”

“But why did you come?”

“Because I have won a position for myself, have enough to enable us to live without eternally fretting over money-matters. I feel that I have the right to come. And then I could not be interested to live on, without you; and I’m willing to face, willing to have you face, whatever may come to us through me. I know that you and I together----”

“Not now--don’t--please.” Marian was pale and she was obviously under a great strain. “You see, you knew all about this. But I didn’t until you looked at me when Jessie brought you. It makes me--happy--I am so happy. But I must--I can’t control myself here.” She leaned over as if her napkin had slipped to the floor. “I love you,” she murmured.

It was Howard’s turn to struggle for self-control. “I understand,” he said, “why you wished me not to go on. You never said those words to me before--and----”

“Oh, yes I have--many and many a time.”

“With your eyes, but not with your voice--at least not so that I could hear. And--well, it is not easy to look calm and only friendly when every nerve in one’s body is vibrating like a violin string under the bow. Yes, let us talk of something else. I’ve never been acutely conscious of the presence of others when I’ve been with you. To-night I’m in great danger of forgetting them altogether.”

“That would be so like you.” Marian laughed, then raised her voice a little and went on. “Yes, your little restaurant in the Rue Louis le Grand was gone. There was a dressmaker in its place--Raudinitz. She made this. How do you like it?”

“It has the air of--of belonging to you.”

Marian looked amused. Howard shrugged his shoulders. “All roads lead to Rome,” he said.

* * * * *

Carnarvon hung about until the women went to bed, so Howard and Marian had no opportunity to be alone. As soon as he saw his last chance vanish, he went to his own room, to the solitude of its balcony in the shadow of the projecting facade with the moonlight flooding the rocks and the sea.

As he sat smoking, the recession came, the reaction from weeks of nervous tension. And with the ebb of the tide entered that Visitor who alone has the privilege of the innermost chamber where lives the man himself, unmasked of all vanity and show and pretense. The visit was not unexpected; for at every such crisis every one is certain of a call from this Visitor, this merciless critic, plain and rude of speech, rare and reluctant in praise, so mocking in our moments of elation, so cruelly frank about our follies and self-excuses when he comes in our moments of depression.

“So you are going to marry?” the Visitor said abruptly. “I thought you had made up your mind on that subject long ago.”

“Love changes a man’s point of view,” Howard replied, timid and apologetic before this quiet, relentless other-self.

“But it doesn’t change the facts of life, does it? It doesn’t change character, does it?”

“I think so. For instance, it has changed me. It has made a man of me. It has been the inspiration of the past year, strengthening me, making me ambitious, energetic. Have I not thought of her all the time, worked for her?”

“You have been uncommonly persistent--as you always are when you are thwarted.” The Visitor wore a satirical smile. “But a spurt of inspiration is one thing. A wife--responsibility--fetters----”

“Not when one loves.”

“That depends upon the kind of love--and the kind of woman--and the kind of man.”

“Could there be any higher kind of love than ours?”

“Most romantic, most high-minded--quite idyllic.” The Visitor’s tone was gently mocking. “And I don’t deny that you may go on loving each the other. But--how does she fit in with your scheme of life? What does she really know of or care about your ambitions? Why, you had so little confidence in her that you didn’t dare to think of marrying her until you had an income which you once would have thought wealth--an income which, by the way, already begins to seem small to you.”

“No, it wasn’t lack of confidence in her,” protested Howard. “It was lack of confidence in myself.”

“True, that did have something to do with it, I grant you. And that reminds me--what has become of all your cowardice about responsibility?”

“Oh, I’m changed there.”

“Are you sure? Are you not deceived by this sudden and maybe momentary streak of good luck in your affairs? You have fixed your ambition high--very high. You wish to make an honest and a useful and a distinguished career. You know you have weaknesses. I needn’t remind you--need I--that you have had to fight those weaknesses? How could you have won thus far if you had been responsible for others instead of being alone, and certain that the consequences would fall upon yourself only? I want to see you continue to win. I don’t want to see you dragged down by extravagance, by love for this woman, by ambition of the kind her friends approve. I don’t want to see you--You were silent when Stokely insulted you!”

“Love--such love as mine--and for such a woman--and with such love in return--drag down? Impossible!”

“Not so--not exactly so, though I must say you are plausible. But don’t forget that you and she are not starting out to make a career. Don’t forget that she is already fixed--her tastes, habits, friendships, associations, ideals already formed. Don’t forget that your love is the only bond between you--and that it may drag you toward her mode of life instead of drawing her towards yours. Don’t forget that your own associations and temptations are becoming more and more difficult. I repeat, you cringed--yes, cringed--when Stokely insulted you. Why?”

Howard was silent.

“And,” the Visitor went on relentlessly, “let me remind you that not only did you give her up without a struggle a few months ago but also she gave you up without a word.”

“But what could she have said?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. I’m not familiar with ways feminine. But I know--we know--that, if there had not been some reservation in her love, some hesitation about you--unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to make her yield--she would not have let you go as she did.”

“But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us.”

“Perhaps--that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you really so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you stimulated by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come? What then?”

“But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large salary--perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary.”

“Perhaps--if you don’t trouble yourself about principles. But how would it be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is honest? Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly, have you the right to assume a responsibility you may not be able to bear, to invite temptations you may not be able to resist?”

There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar into the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.

“God in heaven!” he cried, “am I not human? May I not have companionship and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless always? That is not life; that is not just. I will not; I will not. I love her--love her--love her. With the best that there is in me, I love her. Am I such a coward that I cannot face even my own weaknesses?”

XVIII.

HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.

In August Marian and Mrs. Carnarvon came to the Waldorf for two days. Howard had offered to show them how a newspaper is made; and Mrs. Carnarvon, finding herself bored by too many days of the same few people every day, herself proposed the trip. The three dined in the open air on Sherry’s piazza and at eleven o’clock drove down the Avenue, to the east at Washington Square, and through the Bowery.

“I never saw it before,” said Marian, “and I must say I shall not care if I never see it again. Why do people make so much fuss about slums, I wonder?”

“Oh, they’re so queer, so like another world,” suggested Mrs. Carnarvon. “It gives you such a delightful sensation of sadness. It’s just like a not-too-melancholy play, only better because it’s real. Then, too, it makes one feel so much more comfortable and clean and contented in one’s own surroundings.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jessie.” Marian spoke in mock indignation. “The next thing we know you’ll sink to being a patron of the poor and go about enjoying yourself at making them self-conscious and envious.”

“They’re not at all sad down this way,” said Howard, “except in the usual inescapable human ways. When they’re not hit too hard, they bear up wonderfully. You see, living on the verge of ruin and tumbling over every few weeks get one used to it. It ceases to give the sensation of event.”

Their automobile had turned into Park Row and so reached the _News-Record_ building in Printing House Square. Howard took the two women to the elevator and they shot upward in a car crowded with telegraph messengers, each carrying one or more envelopes, some of them bearing in bold black type the words: “News!--Rush!”

“I suppose that is the news for the paper?” Mrs. Carnarvon asked.

“A little of it. Our special cable and special news from towns to which we have no direct wire and also the _Associated Press_ reports come this way. But we don’t use much _Associated Press_ matter, as it is the same for all the papers.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Throw it away. A New York newspaper throws away every night enough to fill two papers and often enough to fill five or six.”

“Isn’t that very wasteful?”

“Yes, but it’s necessary. Every editor has his own idea of what to print and what not to print and how much space each news event calls for. It is there that editors show their judgment or lack of it. To print the things the people wish to read in the quantities the people like and in the form the most people can most easily understand--that is success as an editor.”

“No doubt,” said Marian, thinking of the low view all her friends took of Howard’s newspaper, “if you were making a newspaper to please yourself, you would make a very different one.”

“Oh, no,” laughed Howard, “I print what I myself like; that is, what I like to find in a newspaper. We print human news made by human beings and interesting to human beings. And we don’t pretend to be anything more than human. We try never to think of our own idea of what the people ought to read, but always to get at what the people themselves think they ought to read. We are journalists, not news-censors.”

“I must say newspapers do not interest me.” Marian confessed it a little diffidently.

“You are probably not interested,” Howard answered, “because you don’t care for news. It is a queer passion--the passion for news. The public has it in a way. But to see it in its delirium you must come here.”

“This seems quiet enough.” Marian looked about Howard’s upstairs office. It was silent, and from the windows one could see New York and its rivers and harbour, vast, vague, mysterious, animated yet quiet.

“Oh, I rarely come here--a few hours a week,” Howard replied. “On this floor the editorial writers work.” He opened a door leading to a private hall. There were five small rooms. In each sat a coatless man, smoking and writing. One was Segur, and Howard called to him.

“Are you too busy to look after Mrs. Carnarvon and Miss Trevor for a few minutes? I must go downstairs.”

Segur gave some “copy” to a boy who handed him a bundle of proofs and rushed away down a narrow staircase. Howard descended in the elevator, and Segur, who had put on his coat, sat talking to the two women as he looked through the proofs, glancing at each narrow strip, then letting it drop to the floor.

“You don’t mind my working?” he asked. “I have to look at these things to see if there is any news that calls for editional attention. If I find anything and can think an editorial thought about it, I write it; and if Howard is in the humour, perhaps the public is permitted to read it.”

“Is he severe?” asked Mrs. Carnarvon.

“The ‘worst ever,’” laughed Segur. “He is very positive and likes only a certain style and won’t have anything that doesn’t exactly fit his ideas. He’s easy to get along with but difficult to work for.”

“I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success.” Marian knew that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she couldn’t endure hearing him criticised.

“No. I think he succeeds because he works, pushes straight on, never stops to repair blunders but never makes the same kind of a blunder the second time.”