Chapter 11

Segur’s eye caught an item that suggested an editorial paragraph. He sat at Howard’s desk, thought a moment, scrawled half a dozen lines in a large ragged hand on a sheet of ruled yellow paper, and pressed an electric button. The boy came, handed him another thick bundle of proofs, took the “copy” and withdrew. Just then Howard returned.

“We’ll go down to the news-room,” he said.

The windows of the great news-room were thrown wide. Scores of electric lights made it bright. At the various desks or in the aisles were perhaps fifty men, most of them young, none of them beyond middle age. They were in every kind of clothing from the most fashionable summer attire to an old pair of cheap and stained duck trousers, collarless negligee shirt open all the way down the front and suspenders hanging about the hips.

Some were writing long-hand; others were pounding away at the typewriter; others were talking in undertones to “typists” taking dictation to the machine; others were reading “copy” and altering it with huge blue pencils which made apparently unreadable smears wherever they touched the paper. In and out skurried a dozen office-boys, responding to calls from various desks, bringing bundles of proofs, thrusting copy into boxes which instantly and noisily shot up through the ceiling.

It was a scene of confusion and furious activity. The face of each individual was calm and his motions by themselves were not excited. But taking all together and adding the tense, strained expression underneath the calm--the expression of the professional gambler--there was a total of active energy that was oppressive.

“We had a fire below us one night,” said Howard. “We are two hundred feet from the street and there were no fire escapes. We all thought it was good-bye. It was nearly half an hour before we found out that the smoke booming up the stairways and into this room had no danger behind it.”

“Gracious!” Mrs. Carnarvon shuddered and looked uneasily about.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Howard reassured her. “We’ve arranged things better since then. Besides, that fire demonstrated that the building was fireproof.”

“And what happened?” asked Miss Trevor.

“Why, just what you see now. The Managing Editor, Mr. King over there--I’ll introduce him to you presently--went up to a group of men standing at one of the windows. They were pretending indifference as they looked down at the crowd which was shouting and tossing its arms in a way that more than suggested pity for us poor devils up here. Well, King said: ‘Boys, boys, this isn’t getting out a paper.’ Every one went back to his work and--and that was all.”

They went on to the room behind the newsroom. As Howard opened its heavy door a sound, almost a roar, of clicking instruments and typewriters burst out. Here again were scores of desks with men seated at them, every man with a typewriter and a telegraph instrument before him.

“These are our direct wires,” Howard explained. “Our correspondents in all the big cities, east, west, north and south and in London, are at the other end of these wires. Let me show you.”

Howard spoke to the operator nearest them. “Whom have you got?”

“I’m taking three thousand words from Kansas City,” he replied. “Washington is on the next wire.”

“Ask Mr. Simpson how the President is to-night,” Howard said to the Washington operator.

His instrument clicked a few times and was silent. Almost immediately the receiver began to click and, as the operator dashed the message off on his typewriter the two women read over his shoulder: “Just came from White House. He is no better, probably a little worse because weaker. Simpson.”

“And can you hear just as quickly from London?” Marian asked.

“Almost. I’ll try. There is always a little delay in transmission from the land systems to the cable system; and messages have to be telephoned between our office in Trafalgar Square and the cable office down in the city. Let’s see, it’s five o’clock in the morning in London now. They’ve been having it hot there. I’ll ask about the weather.”

Howard dictated to the man at the London wire: “Roberts, London. How is the weather? Howard.”

In less than ten minutes the cable-man handed Howard a typewritten slip reading: “_News-Record_, New York, Howard: Thermometer 97 our office now. Promises hottest day yet. Roberts.”

“I never before realised how we have destroyed distance,” said Mrs. Carnarvon.

“I don’t think any one but a newspaper editor completely realises it,” Howard answered. “As one sits here night after night, sending messages far and wide and receiving immediate answers, he loses all sense of space. The whole world seems to be in his anteroom.”

“I begin to see fascination in this life of yours.” Marian’s face showed interest to enthusiasm. “This atmosphere tightens one’s nerves. It seems to me that in the next moment I shall hear of some thrilling happening.”

“It’s listening for the first rumour of the ‘about to happen’ that makes newspaper-men so old and yet so young, so worn and yet so eager. Every night, every moment of every night, we are expecting it, hoping for some astounding news which it will test our resources to the utmost to present adequately.”

From the news-room they went up to the composing room--a vast hall of confusion, filled with strange-looking machines and half-dressed men and boys. Some were hurrying about with galleys of type, with large metal frames; some were wheeling tables here and there; scores of men and a few women were seated at the machines. These responded to touches upon their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with letters printed backwards.

Up through the floor of this room burst boxes filled with “copy.” Boys snatched the scrawled, ragged-looking sheets and tossed them upon a desk. A man seated there cut them into little strips, hanging each strip upon a hook. A line of men filed rapidly past these hooks, snatching each man a single strip and darting away to a machine.

“It is getting late,” said Howard. “The final rush for the first edition is on. They are setting the last ‘copy.’”

“But,” Mrs. Carnarvon asked, “how do they ever get the different parts of the different news-items together straight?”

“The man who is cutting copy there--don’t you see him make little marks on each piece? Those marks tell them just where their ‘take,’ as they call it, belongs.”

They went over to the part of the great room where there were many tables, on each a metal frame about the size of a page of the newspaper. Some of the frames were filled with type, others were partly empty. And men were lifting into them the galleys of type under the direction of the Night Editor and his staff. As soon as a frame was filled two men began to even the ends of the columns and then to screw up an inside framework which held the type firmly in place. Then a man laid a great sheet of what looked like blotting-paper upon the page of type and pounded it down with a mallet and scraped it with a stiff brush.

“That is the matrix,” said Howard. “See him putting it on the elevator.” They looked down the shaft. “It has dropped to the sub-basement,” said Howard, “two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending it into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses; metal will be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal form, the metal impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the press to print from.”

They walked back through the room which was now in almost lunatic confusion--forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors, compositors, boys, rushing to and fro in a fury of activity. Again the phenomenon of the news-room, the individual faces calm but their tense expressions and their swift motions making an impression of almost irrational excitement.

“Why such haste?” asked Marian.

“Because the paper must be put to press. It must contain the very latest news and it must also catch the mails; and the mail-trains do not wait.”

They descended in the main elevator to the ground floor and then went down a dark and winding staircase until they faced an iron door. Howard pushed it open and they entered the press-room. Its temperature was blood-heat, its air heavy and nauseating with the odours of ink, moist paper and oil, its lights dim. They were in a gallery and below them on all sides were the huge presses, silent, motionless, waiting.

Suddenly a small army of men leaped upon the mighty machines, scrambled over them, then sprang back. With a tremendous roar that shook the entire building the presses began to revolve, to hurl out great heaps of newspapers.

“Those presses eat six hundred thousand pounds of paper and four tons of ink a week,” Howard shouted. “They can throw out two hundred thousand complete papers an hour--papers that are cut, folded, pasted, and ready to send away. Let us go before you are stifled. This air is horrible.”

They returned in the elevator to his lofty office. Even there a slight vibration from the press-room could be felt. But it was calm and still, a fit place from which to view the panorama of sleeping city and drowsy harbour tranquil in the moonlight.

“Look.” Howard was leaning over the railing just outside his window.

They looked straight down three hundred feet to the street made bright by electric lights. Scores of wagons loaded with newspapers were rushing away from the several newspaper buildings. The shouts, the clash of hoofs and heavy tires on the granite blocks, the whirr of automobiles, were borne faintly upward.

“It is the race to the railway stations to catch the mail-trains,” Howard explained. “The first editions go to the country. These wagons are hurrying in order that tens of thousands of people hundreds of miles away, at Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and scores on scores of towns between and beyond, may find the New York newspapers on their breakfast-tables.”

The office-boy came with a bundle of papers, warm, moist, the ink brilliant.

“And now for the inquest,” said Howard.

“The inquest?” Marian looked at him inquiringly.

“Yes--viewing the corpse. It was to give birth to this that there was all that intensity and fury--that and a thousand times more. For, remember, this paper is the work of perhaps twenty thousand brains, in every part of the world, throughout civilisation and far into the depths of barbarism. Look at these date lines--cities and towns everywhere in our own country, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America. You’ll find most of the capitals of Europe represented; and Africa, north, south and central, east and west coast. Here’s India and here the heart of Siberia.

“There is China and there Japan and there Australia. Think of these scores of newspaper correspondents telegraphing news of the doings of their fellow beings--not what they did last month or last year, but what they did a few hours ago--some of it what they were doing while we were dining up at Sherry’s. Then think of the thousands on thousands of these newspaper-men, eager, watchful agents of publicity, who were on duty but had nothing to report to-day. And----”

Howard shrugged his shoulders and tossed the paper from him.

“There it lies,” he said, “a corpse. Already a corpse, its life ended before it was fairly born. There it is, dead and done for--writ in water, and by anonymous hands. Who knows who did it? Who cares?”

He caught Marian’s eyes, looking wonder and reproach.

“I don’t like to hear you say that,” she said, forgetting Mrs. Carnarvon. “Other men--yes, the little men who work for the cheap rewards. But not you, who work for the sake of work. This night’s experience has thrilled me. I understand your profession now. I see what it means to us all, to civilisation, what a splendid force for good, for enlightenment, for uplifting it is. I can see a great flood of light radiating from this building, pouring into the dark places, driving away ignorance. And the thunder of those presses seems to me to fill the world with some mighty command--what is it?--oh, yes--I can hear it distinctly. It is, ‘Let there be light!’”

Mrs. Carnarvon’s back was toward them and she was looking out at the harbour. Howard put his hands upon Marian’s shoulders and they looked each the other straight in the eyes.

“Lovers and comrades,” he said, “always. And how strong we are--together!”

XIX.

“I MUST BE RICH.”

“While I don’t feel dependent upon the owners of the _News-Record_, still I am not exactly independent of them either. And if I left them it would only be to become dependent in the same way upon somebody else. A man who makes his living by the advocacy of principles should be wholly free. If he isn’t, the principles are sure sooner or later to become incidental to the living, instead of the living being incidental to the principles.”

“But you see--perhaps I ought to have told you before--that is, there may be”--Marian was stammering and blushing.

“What’s the matter? Don’t frighten me by looking so--so criminal,” Howard laughed.

It was late in August. Marian was visiting Mrs. Brandon at Irvington-on-the-Hudson and she and Howard were driving.

“I never told you. But the fact is”--she hesitated again.

“Is it about your other engagement? You never told me about that--how you broke it off. I don’t want you to tell me unless you wish to. You know I never meddle in past matters. I’m simply trying to help you out.”

“Instead, you’re making it worse. I’d rather not tell you that if----”

“We’ll never speak of it again. And now, what is it that is troubling you?”

“I have been trying to tell you--I wish you wouldn’t look at me--I’ve got a small income--it’s really very small.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it. It isn’t very big--only about eight thousand a year--some years not so much. But then, if anything happened--we could be--we could live.”

Howard smiled as he looked at her--but not with his eyes.

“I’m glad,” he said. “It makes me feel safer in several ways. And I’m especially glad that it is not larger than mine. I know it’s stupid, as so many of our instincts are; but I should not like to marry a woman who had a larger income than I could earn. I think it is the only remnant I have of the ‘lord and master’ idea that makes so many men ridiculous. But we need not let that bother us. Fate has made us about equal in this respect, so unimportant yet so important; and we are each independent of the other. Each will always know that love is the only bond that holds us together.”

They decided that they would live at the rate of about fifteen thousand a year and would put by the rest of their income. She was to undertake the entire management of their home, he transferring his share by check each month.

“And so,” she said, “we shall never have to discuss money matters.”

“We couldn’t,” laughed Howard. “I don’t know anything about them and could not take part in a discussion.”

As they were to be married in November, they planned to take an apartment when Marian came back to town--in late September. She was to attend to the furnishing and all was to be in readiness by the time they were married. Howard was to get a six weeks’ vacation and, as soon as they returned, they were to go to housekeeping.

Her visit to the _News-Record_ office had made a change in her. Until she met Howard, she had known only the world-that-idles and the world-that-drudges. Howard brought her the first real news of the world-that-works. Of course she knew that there was such a world, but she had confused it with the world-that-drudges. She liked to hear Howard talk about his world, but she thought that his enthusiasm blinded him to the truth of its drudgery; and she often caught herself half regretting that he had to work.

But that vast machine for the swift collecting and distributing of the news of the world had opened her eyes, had made her see her lover and, through him, his life, in a different aspect. She had accepted the supercilious, thoughtless opinion of those about her that the newspaper is a mere purveyor of inaccurate gossip. And while Howard had tried to show her his profession as it was, he had only succeeded in convincing her that he himself had an exalted view of it; a view which she thought creditable to him but wide of the disagreeable truth.

On that trip down-town she had seen “the press” with the flaws reduced and the merits looming. She had looked into those all-seeing eyes that watch the councils of statesmen and the movements of nations and peoples, yet also note the swing of a murderous knife in an alley of the slums. She had heard that stentorian voice of Publicity, arousing the people of the earth to apprehend, to reflect, to progress.

She had been proud of Howard for his appearance, for what he said and the way he said it. Now she was proud of him for the part he was taking in this wonderful world-that-works. And she would not have confessed to him how insignificant she felt, how weak and worthless.

She thought she was impatient for the time to come when she could learn how to help him in his work, could begin to feel that she too had a real share in it. With what seemed to her most creditable energy and self-sacrifice she tried again to interest herself in newspapers. But the trivial parts bored her; the chronicles of crime repelled her; and the politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the range of her knowledge or of her interest. “I shall wait until we are married,” she said, “then he will teach me.” And she did not suspect how significant, how ominous her postponement was.

She asked him if he would not teach her and he replied: “Why, certainly, if you are interested. But I don’t intend to trouble you with the details of my profession. I want you to lead your own life--to do what interests you.”

She did not stop to analyse her feeling of relief at this release, and went on to protest: “But I want your life to be my life. I want there to be only one life--our life.”

“And there shall be--each contributing his share, at least I’ll try to contribute mine. But you have your own individuality, dear; and a very strong one it is. And I don’t want you to change.”

At the time he was deep in his plans for illustrating the _News-Record_. Early in that fall’s campaign they had secured the best cartoonist in America. Cartoons are rarely the work of one man but are got up by consultations. Howard spent never less than an hour each day with the cartoonist, Wickham, wrestling with the problem of the next day’s picture. For he insisted upon having a striking cartoon each day, and gave it the most conspicuous place in the paper--the top-centre of the first page.

“If a cartoon is worth printing at all,” he said, “it is worth printing large and conspicuous. And to be worth printing it must be like an ideal editorial--one point sharply and swiftly made and so clear that the most careless glance-of-the-eye is enough.”

Wickham had made a series of cartoons on the campaign, humorous and satirical, which had the distinction of being reproduced on lantern slides for use in all parts of the town. It was an admirable beginning of the new policy of illustration. Howard had been making a careful study of all the illustrators in the country, not overlooking those toiling in obscurity on the big western dailies. He had selected a staff of twenty; as soon as Coulter and Stokely assented, he engaged them by telegraph. Five were developed artists, the rest beginners with talent. He gave all of his attention for two weeks to organising this staff. He infected it with his enthusiasm. He impressed upon it his ideas of newspaper illustration--the dash and energy of the French illustrators adapted to American public taste. He insisted upon the artists studying the French illustrated papers and applying what they learned. It was not until the first Sunday in December that he felt ready to submit the results of these labours to the public.

Again he scored over the “contemporaries” of the _News-Record_. They printed many more illustrations than it did. It had only one illustration on a page, but there was one on every page and a good one. All the subjects were well chosen--either action or character--and as many good looking women as possible.

“Never publish a commonplace face,” he said. “There is no such thing in life as an uninteresting face. Always find the element of interest and bring it out.”

The result of this policy, interpreted by a carefully trained and enthusiastic staff, was what the out-of-town press was soon praising as “a revelation in newspaper-illustration.” Howard himself was surprised. He had mentally insured against a long period of disappointment.

“This shows,” he remarked to King and Vroom, “how much more competent men are than we usually think--if they get a chance, if they are pointed in the right direction and are left free.”

“He certainly knows his business.” Vroom was looking after Howard admiringly. “I never saw anybody who so well understood when to lead and when to let alone. What results he does get!”

“A pity to waste such talents on this thankless business,” said King. “If he’d gone into real business, he would have a salary of a hundred thousand a year, would be rich and secure for life. Why, a business man could and would make a whole career on the ideas he has in a single week. As it is----”

King shrugged his shoulders and Vroom finished the sentence for him: “Coulter and Stokely could kick him out to-morrow and the _News-Record_ would go straight on living upon his ideas for ten years at least.”

Howard needed no one to make this truth clear to him to the full. Often, as he thought of his expanding tastes, his expanding expenditures and his expanding plans both for his private life and for his career, he felt an awful sinking at the heart and a sense of fundamental weakness.

“I am building upon sand,” he said to himself. “In business, in the law, in almost any other career to-day’s work would be to-morrow’s capital. As it is, I am ever more and more a slave. To be free I ought to be poor or rich. And I cannot endure the thought of poverty again. I must be rich.”

The idea allured him to a degree that made him ashamed of himself. Sometimes, when he was talking to Marian or writing editorials, all in the strain of high principle and contempt for sordidness, he would flush at the thought that he was in reality a good deal of a hypocrite. “I’m expressing the ideals I ought to have, the ideals I used to have, not the ideals I have.”

But the clearer this discrepancy became to him and the wider the gap between what he ought to think and what he really did think, the more strenuously he protested to himself against himself, and the more fiercely he denounced in public the very poison he was himself taking.

“I am living in a tainted atmosphere,” he said to Marian. “We all are. I fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore of my body?”

“I don’t understand you.” Marian was used to his moods of self-criticism and did not attach much importance to them.

He thought a moment. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “What’s the use of discussing what can’t be helped?” How could he tell her that the greatest factor in his enervating environment was herself; that the strongest chains which held him in it were the chains which bound him to her? Indeed, was he not indulging in cowardly self-excuse in thinking that this was true? Had not his success, rather than his love, made ambition unfettered by principle the mainspring of his life?

XX.

ILLUSION.

“How shall we be married?” Howard asked her in the late Autumn.