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 a.s.sume 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.
"G.o.d 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 _a.s.sociated Press_ reports come this way. But we don"t use much _a.s.sociated 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 s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ties 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 pa.s.sion--the pa.s.sion 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."
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 b.u.t.ton. 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 rea.s.sured her. "We"ve arranged things better since then. Besides, that fire demonstrated that the building was fireproof."