IN the course of a long and varied life, Miss Editha Greer had been consistently eccentric. In the close of it she was not less so. Witness the following telegram received by her great-nephew, Jeremy Robson:
Philadelphia, July 30, 1912
I am dead. Do not come to funeral. Letter follows.
E. Greer.
To say that the recipient of this posthumous message was overcome with grief, would be excessive. His feeling for his aged relative had been one of mild and remote piety, relieved by an intermittent sense of amusement, and impregnated with a vague dread of what she might do next. No more next now for E. Greer. Jeremy was honestly sorry; not on his own account, but for the old lady herself. She had so enjoyed life! Doubtless she had relinquished it with courage; but, also, he felt certain, with profound dissent from the verdict. But, having duly dismissed him from consideration in her lifetime, what should she be writing him about now that she was dead?
Like the telegram, the letter, when it arrived, proved to be an anticipatory document. It dealt, in a frank and unflattering style, with Jeremy’s expectations upon her property which, she observed characteristically, was much less than most fools supposed.
I have long considered you a bit of a ninny [continued this pleasing document]. Nor have I valid cause to alter my opinion. But I recently met at a country house a young woman who knows you. [Jeremy’s heart performed a porpoise-roll within his breast.] She tells me that I am an old fool. I interpret her expression and bearing, not her words, which are that I do not understand you. Apparently she believes that she does. If I left you all my money, she would perhaps marry you for it. On the whole, however, I believe not. She has neglected much more brilliant opportunities here. Moreover, when I put the question to her, she said not. She added that I was impertinent, and that impertinence was no more tolerable from the old to the young than from the young to the old. I like your Miss Marcia Ames.
The point of importance is that she considers the modest, in fact I may say nominal and complimentary, sum set apart for you in my will, quite insufficient. We discussed it at length. She is possessed of a devil of frankness. She maintains that I should leave you a modest competency. She thinks that it might save your immortal soul, if I correctly interpret her attitude. She thinks your immortal soul is worth saving. She assumes that you have an immortal soul. She even appeared to think that I have an immortal soul. Upon that moot point I shall be better able to judge by the time this letter goes forward to you; but it is improbable that I shall communicate any further or more authoritative information.
She is a strange creature. You should have married her, though she is far too old for you. A hundred years at least. I judge you might have married her but lost your chance. [Here the reader groaned.] She might have made a success of you. I gravely doubt whether my money can.
Do not hastily assume that the money is within your grasp. There is a condition to be fulfilled. I believe that you will not fulfill it. She believes that you will, even though she does not know what it is. Nor shall you. Whether you receive a small pittance or a roundly comfortable sum, depends now entirely upon yourself. I am still malicious enough—I forget that I am now, as you read this, dead and safely buried—I was still malicious enough to wish that I might see your struggles of mind upon receiving this, the last communication wherewith you will ever be troubled from
Your dutiful great-aunt,
E. Greer.
Perturbation over the prospect of comparative enrichment was quite subordinated, as Jeremy read this curious epistle, to the turbulence of emotion excited by the knowledge that Marcia had been interesting herself so intimately in his affairs. So far, the joke turned against Great-Aunt Greer. But she was more than avenged by the sting in her surmise that Jem had forfeited his chance with Marcia. Where was Marcia? If he got the money, or the assurance of it, why should he not set out to find her, even though it took him across the world, and try once more? Would she have the force to escape from him again? Was not her flight the initial confession, upon which her queer relations with E. Greer set the seal? Only as an afterthought came the consideration of the condition upon which he was to secure the larger legacy. He could not seem to get excited or disturbed over it. Nothing mattered much in the bleak soul of Jeremy Robson but Marcia Ames. Great-Aunt Greer would have been sorely disgusted! Or, perhaps she would n’t.
Three days thereafter a caller came to see Jeremy at The Record office. His card indicated that he was Mr. Arthur Welton, representing the firm of Hunt & Hunt, Attorneys, Philadelphia. His appearance indicated that he was about Jeremy’s age. His bearing indicated that he was older than Pharaoh’s uncle, and charged with world-destinies. Jeremy had a shrewd guess that this was his first mission away from home.
Mr. Welton looked Jeremy over minutely and shook hands. The firm of Hunt & Hunt, which he had the honor to represent, had charge of the affairs of Miss Editha Greer, deceased, he informed Mr. Robson. Would Mr. Robson kindly put on his coat?
“Do you want me to go out with you?” asked Jeremy.
“As you prefer.”
“What’s the matter with this? Nobody will interrupt us here.”
“Very well.” The age-old youth wrapped himself in an air of superior expectancy.
“Go ahead,” said the reporter.
“The coat,” reminded Mr. Welton.
Jeremy was annoyed. “Why the devil should I put on a coat with the mercury ramping around 90?”
“A mere formality,” murmured his visitor.
“Oh, very well!” growled Jeremy. He departed and presently returned, fully and uncomfortably garmented.
Again Mr. Arthur Welton inspected him carefully. “You do not wear mourning, I observe.”
“I donot.”
“Why not, may I ask?”
“Don’t believe in it. It’s a pagan custom and usually hypocritical.”
“I cannot agree with you,” retorted the other weightily. “On principle, I cannot agree with you. In the present instance, would it be an evidence of hypocrisy to have shown a formal mark of sorrow for the loss of your great-aunt?”
“It would.”
“You felt, then, no affection or esteem for the late Miss Editha Greer?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“It is so much the business of my firm that I have traveled a thousand miles to ascertain your attitude.”
“The condition!” cried Jeremy, aloud. “I beg your pardon,” he added. “If you had told me that this was a legal cross-examination—”
“Not precisely that, Mr. Robson. I should have thought that you would appreciate its purport,” returned the other in a tone of grave rebuke.
“I do.” There was a grim set to the other’s lips. “I know Aunt Edie well enough to appreciate her practical jokes.”
“Really, Mr. Robson! I am bound to protest against the assumption that our late client—”
“All right! All right! I withdraw it. Fire ahead.”
Mr. Arthur Weston looked delicately but impressively pained. “You felt no affection or esteem for the deceased?” he inquired through pursed lips.
“I liked the old lady, in a way,” confessed Jeremy reminiscently. “She had such a cheery spice of the devil in her. And her tongue! And her pen! Oh, Lord! What an editorial writer she’d have made, if she could have kept out of jail.”
“I need hardly tell you, Mr. Robson, that she gravely disapproved of your journalistic predilections.”
“Nobody need tell me after she got through. Nobody need tell anybody anything that my Great-Aunt Greer had told ’em first.”
“In order that the record may be clear, let me put this to you. It is admitted that you disapprove of symbolical mourning; that you do not practice it. If you did practice it, would you have worn mourning for the deceased Miss Greer?”
“If the dog had n’t stopped to scratch the flea would he have caught the rabbit?” retorted the irreverent Mr. Robson.
“I must insist upon a reply.”
“No; I certainly shouldn’t. Why should I? I’m not grieving over Aunt Edie’s death. She’s no real loss to me. Nor gain, either, now,” he added with a rueful grin. “I’m not going to pretend. So, you see, there’s not even a mitigating circumstance.”
“Mitigating circ—”
“Good legal phrase, is n’t it? Oh, I understand your errand perfectly. Aunt Edie wrote me that there was a ‘condition’ to the legacy that I would n’t fulfill. If you’d come out here and found me all swathed up in black like a mummy, and with a funereal gulp in my voice when I spoke of my dear old Auntie, and the general manners of an undertaker right on the job, I expect it might have been worth twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars to me. Even a mourning band on my coat and a few appropriate sighs in the right place might have got me five or ten thousand. Maybe if I’d stopped to figure it out, I’d have dressed the part. A fellow will do a good deal for money. Then again, maybe I would n’t.” The memory of Marcia’s frank and lustrous eyes checked him. Could he have met their challenge, with the black badge of hypocrisy on him? “No! I’m damned if I would!” he declared with profound sincerity. “So there you have it. I know where I get off, and I don’t much care, to tell the truth. I lose.”
The overweighted legal victim of responsibilities almost too heavy to be borne, slowly and accurately gathered up his hat, his gloves, his cane, his portfolio, and his eye-glasses in the absorbed manner of one taking an inventory. He bowed a solemn and professional farewell to Mr. Robson. At the door he paused. A gleam as of some faint, inward flickering of the eternal human which must at times assert itself even through the cerements of legal procedure, appeared upon his pink and careworn features.
“No,” he pronounced profoundly. “You win.”
WHAT ’s the matter with you, Robson?”
Young Jeremy Robson turned a lack-luster eye upon Wackley, his managing editor. “Nothing,” he said listlessly.
“You’re not looking well.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said the reporter, dully wishing his solicitous superior at the devil.
“Want a few days off to go fishin’?”
“No, thanks.”
“What do you want?” inquired Wackley, dreading to hear that a raise of pay was the requisite. Cheered by the valuable reporter’s negative declaration of content with his lot as it was, the editor continued: “A sick owl is a merry wag to what you’ve been for the last ten days. All the ginger has gone out of your stuff. Can’t you dig us up something more as good as your Eli Wade story?”
In that moment Jeremy Robson savored the sensations of the chicken-killing puppy when, awaking from blessedly forgetful reverie, it finds the dismal and penal relic of its crime still fast about its neck.
“Look here,” pursued Wackley. “This is n’t going to do. You quit for the day, and go home. To-morrow there’s going to be doings in the Senate. Martin Embree is going to spring something. You cover it. We’ll want a good story, if the stuff comes through. Beat it for home, now!”
Home? Young Jeremy Robson felt a loathly distaste for his quiet room up off the campus. But so he felt a loathly distaste for the whole of that hollow and lifeless shell about him, which had so lately been the world of his crowded, vigorous interests. Man delighted him not; no, nor woman, either; not even the pride of his work and his satisfaction in having become something of a figure, though in a minor degree, locally. He hungered, with the intensity of a self-willed and rather lonely nature, for the sight and sound and essence of Marcia Ames who was some weeks and Heaven only knew how many miles away from him. Young Jeremy Robson had suffered as severe a hurt as youth can suffer and still continue to be youth.
He wandered idly up the Nicklin Avenue hill and turned into the shaded sweetness of Montgomery Street. Miss Letitia Pritchard was at her hedge-row, cutting roses. She was a placid and vigorous mite of a woman, unfaded at fifty, sweet and hardy and fresh-hued and rugged like a late, frost-resisting apple.
“How hot and tired you look!” was her greeting across the barrier of bloom and fragrance. “Come in and I’ll give you some iced ginger-and-lemon.” She led the way to a dwarfish table in a fairy grotto of rocks and climbing flowers. “Are you never coming to see me any more?”
“I didn’t know you’d care to have me,” he replied, exactly like a forlorn small boy.
“Your rival, Buddy Higman, comes every day. Though that’s partly business. But he always starts in by asking, ‘Heard from Her, again, Miss Letty?’”
Her visitor gave her a grateful look. “What do you hear, Miss Pritchard?”
“My young and dangerous cousin is dashing about New York at a great rate,” she informed him, “enjoying life to the utmost.”
“Then she has n’t sailed yet.”
“She sails in a fortnight.”
“Does she say anything about coming back?”
The rosy spinster shook her head. “Not a word. But then, Marcia does n’t say things. She does ’em.”
“Do you think she will come back—some time?”
“Probably not. I think she will—well, do what is best for her. Without being at all a selfish person, Marcia has a singular instinct for doing what is best for herself. In the real sense, I mean.”
Undoubtedly! reflected young Mr. Jeremy Robson. She had done the best thing for herself in judging him and finding him lacking. Acceptance of which fact gave to his face an expression which caused Miss Pritchard to look the other way. Presently she went to a shelf in the nook and brought out an envelope which she placed in her caller’s hand.
“Are n’t they good!” said she.
He smoothed out the curving paper, and Marcia’s own face smiled forth its quaint and inscrutable witchery at him.
“I took it the day before she went away. There’s one to spare,” she suggested.
“Do you think she’d want me to have it?” he asked, his hungry gaze set upon the little print.
“You’re a nice boy,” said Miss Letitia Pritchard. (“And all the nicer,” she thought to herself, “for being so much a boy.”) “Yes; she’d be glad to have you have it, I think.”
“She did n’t say so?”
Sympathy for the eagerness of his tone softened the old maid’s smile. “No. She did n’t say so. She did n’t say anything about you, except that you’d come to see me. For a time I thought her prophecy was wrong.”
“I’d like to come again.”
“As often as you like,” she said kindly. “You’re one of three people she talked to me about, the night before she left. The others were Buddy—she is going to help him get an education when the time comes—and Eli Wade.” From day to day Jeremy had postponed the dreaded confessional visit to the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “You’ve reminded me of an errand, Miss Pritchard,” he said.
Bidding her good-bye, he went direct to the Infirmary. The old practitioner sat hunched over a pair of white buckskins. He lifted a mild, but questioning face to Jeremy.
“Come in, Mr. Robson,” said he. “It’s quite some time sence you was here.”
“I was ashamed to come,” blurted Jeremy..
“Shucks! Don’t say that. You can’t be responsible for what they order you to write. That’s a reporter’s job.”
“Who says so?”
“Nick Milliken. He says any reporter ’d have to do the same.”
This was a bitter flavoring to the dose. “That is n’t so,” replied Jeremy quietly. “I need n’t have written it; not that way. I need n’t have written it at all.”
The Boot & Shoe Surgeon set down the subject upon which he was operating. “I don’t understand,” he said, puzzled and despondent. “Did you want to do it?”
“That is n’t the question. I did n’t have to do it. If necessary I could have resigned.”
The old man’s face cleared up. “Quit your job? That’d ’a’ been foolish. There was n’t any call for you to do that.”
“Anyhow I’m mighty sorry I ever touched the story. And if I’d known what it was going to do to you”—The old man flinched involuntarily at this reference to the dead glories of his School Board incumbency—“I’d never have touched it in the world.”
“Sure you would! You’d do it again. To-morrow if the orders came.”
Jem whirled to meet the malevolent smile of Nicholas Milliken, the Socialist, standing in the doorway.
“I told you not to blame this young feller,” the newcomer bade Eli Wade. “He can’t help it. He’s only a louse-souled ratchet in the machinery of the capitalistic press.” Obviously much pleased with this rich metaphor, Mr. Milliken entered and seated himself.
“Well, I knew he wouldn’t do it to me a-purpose,” said Eli Wade.
Jeremy Robson felt sick; too sick even to be incensed at Milliken who proceeded:
“Did n’t even know the little game they were playing, did you, young feller? Well, you see, Eli, here, he’s a radical as far as his intelligence will carry him. That’s my influence on him. The bosses don’t want radicals on the School Board. They don’t want ’em anywhere. Anyhow the Schools belong to the Germans: that’s their specialty. So, Eli being against the cultural-extension-of-German plan, they stir up the Germans against him, and then sick the newspapers onto him, and when they sick,youdo the yapping. That’s all there is tothat. Except that Smiling Mart, the damned hypocrite, steps up and eases Eli out to help put in another German and clinch his hold on a few more German votes. Not that it ain’t all right, at that; if they’ll put in a good radical. The cultural extension’s good enough, like anything else that’ll help peoplethink. Oh, these fools! They can’t see education is what’s going to dish ’em all and bring on the Social Revolution.”
“Don’t you talk against Martin Embree, Nick,” admonished the proprietor. “There ain’t a straighter set pair o’ feet in the State of Centralia.”
“All right. Then I’m a goat; look at my hoofs!” grinned the Socialist. “But be patient with our helpless young hired-man writer here.”
Jeremy liked Milliken’s contemptuous excusals less than Wade’s blame, and said so.
“Oh, you ain’t reached the bottom of your ditch yet,” jeered the Socialist. “How’s the editorial end? Still writing ’em?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy shortly.
“Pot of ink; pot o’ glue; pot o’ soft soap and a pair of blinders; there’s your editorial-writer’s outfit. Done any slush-bucketing for Montrose Clark yet?”
“No.”
“Say it as though you did n’t expect to. But you will. Oh, yes; you’ll come to it.”
“Let him be, Nick,” said the gentle old philosopher of foot-garb.
“Did he let you be? Let him listen. One day old Judge Slippery Selden Dana will come puttering into The Record office—”
“On the ball of his sole,” put in the Boot & Shoe Surgeon.
“Pussyfooting.Ofcourse. He’ll suggest to Mr. Farley; that some recognition of Mr. Montrose Clark’s eminent services as a citizen would be timely. Know what that means? Means that Puffy Clark and the P.-U. Co. are getting ready to grab another franchise. Does Mr. Farley see it that way? He does! He remembers a little slice of P.-U. stock in the strong-box. And if Young Feller, here, is good enough with his pen, he wins the job of puffery for the puffiest little public-utility-grafting puff-adder that ever stung a city. And willhesee it that way? He will. He’ll remember his little pay envelope at the end of the week, and he’ll come through. It’s a grand little system.”
“Nothing wrong with a system that lets a man get from his employees what he pays for,” defended Jeremy.
“Nothing wrong with your cutting Eli Wade’s throat to order, either. Eh?”
To this Jeremy found no reply.
“Remember that apology I was going to make on demand? Do I hear any demand? I guess the apology’s the other way around.”
“I’ve made it. Not to you, though. I’m going on. Eli! Once more I’m sorry and I’m ashamed.”
“Until next time,” added the irrepressible malice of the white-haired Socialist.
Not trusting himself to reply, the reporter walked out. Within a few strides Milliken was at his side.
“He’s bad hurt, the old boy,” he confided in a wholly altered and wholly sincere tone.
“I’m sorry—”
‘“Oh, your story is only part of it. Clever! Vur-ree clever. But they’d have got his place on the Board anyway. They needed it.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. Unless,” added the other on reflection, “you could slip something pleasant about him over some time. That’d please him. He’s like a child, about print.”
At home Jem took out the picture of Marcia Ames and studied it. Tiny though it was, it was instinct with her very poise and spiritual effluence. As so often with herself, he felt the something unsaid behind the serene self-possession of the face; the something vital for which he must grope. What was the message, the demand which the face was making upon him, which she was making upon him through this dear memento? Ranging back, he recalled in a flash that first impression of her in the meeting, while she was still so completely unknown that he had mistaken even the fundamental matter of sex; the impression of an untouched, untainted valorousness. Again he saw it, reflected from the tiny delicacy of the picture. Plain enough now what she demanded of him.
It was courage.
THE Senate proceedings did not open until ten o’clock. Meantime Montrose Clark, President of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and in some part godling of local affairs, had telephoned his commands to The Record that a representative be sent to his office that morning to take a statement for the paper. Jeremy, incautiously dropping in at the office early, got the job to do before going to the Capitol. He was admitted to an outer office by the hand-perfected private secretary, cross-questioned briefly, and passed in to the Presence.
Mr. Montrose Clark was telephoning. He was revealed to Jeremy’s inquiring eye as a plump, glossy, red-faced little man with a fussily assured manner, an autocratic voice and a keen and greedy eye. Few indeed were the local pies of promise or flavor in which Mr. Clark did not have a pudgy and profit-taking finger; and his bearing suggested the man comfortably sure of taking care of himself. He snapped “G’-bye” into the telephone and turned to Jeremy.
“You’re the rippawtah from The Record?”
The accent of the word stirred Jeremy’s bile. He did not know that it was merely a sub-conscious stock trick of Mr. Clark’s; that there were certain words, such as “rippawtah,” “culchah,” “legislaychuh,” and the like, whereby he asserted his superiority of intellectual status, reverting to the comfortable speech of the Middle West for the communication of other thoughts.
“I’m from The Record,” he said.
“Take this.” The public-utilitarian began to dictate....
“Got that? Be sure to be accurate. This is important.” To the reporter it seemed neither important nor interesting. It was a statement concerning a projected change, petty, administrative, and technical, in the conduct of the trolley system. Had it been of the most vital significance, the “rippawtah” would still have grilled at the impersonal arrogance of the other’s attitude.
“Got that?” repeated Mr. Clark, after another passage. “Read it over.”
Jeremy laid down his pencil. “Don’t you think you’d better send for one of your stenographers?”
“What for?” demanded the other. “A rippawtah ought to be able to take dictation, if he’s competent.”
“A ‘rippawtah,’ as you call him, is accustomed to a certain degree of courtesy.”
Mr. Montrose Clark pressed a button and his hand-perfected private secretary popped in.
“Garson! Call The Record. Tell Farley to instruct his rippawtah to follow directions and not be insolent.”
Red to his cheek-bones, Jeremy tore up the sheet of paper on which he had been writing, dropped the pieces upon the immaculate rug of the outraged Mr. Montrose Clark, and marched out. Straight to The Record office he went and sought Wackley.
“You can have my job. I’m through.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the astonished and alarmed managing editor.
Jeremy told him. Wackley laughed. He had no intention of losing so valuable a man as Robson.
“Between us, Montrose Clark is an ass,” he said. “Don’t let him bother you. We’ll keep you away from his jobs after this. Anyway, we’re going to work you into editorials and specials more, from now on. Trot along now to the Capitol, and keep your eye on Mart Embree.” Anticipation was in the air of the Senate Chamber when Jeremy arrived. Something special was expected from Senator Embree. As always, when he was on the programme, the galleries were full. There was reason and precedent for this, for the two local newspapers were wont to report the leader of the Northern Tier in a cautious, not to say niggardly manner. People who wished to savor the full acidity of the young radical’s utterances, would best get seats for themselves, or be dependent upon more provident friends for word-of-mouth synopsis of the proceedings, since the unfortunate instance of the famous “Piracy and the P.-U.” speech on the Special Condemnation Bill, in which Senator Embree had held up that civic godling, Mr. Montrose Clark, to the scorn and reprehension of the impious rabble, and the local press had published the whole matter. Politicians had confidently declared that the speech would terminate the public life of Smiling Mart, who, by the way, had smiled only twice in the whole course of his effort, once at the beginning and again at the end. Montrose Clark, they said, would be too strong for him. It did not so appear. When the tumult and the shouting had died and the captains of industry and the kings of local politics had departed and laid their plans for the elimination of the upstart, it transpired that the upstart had by that one speech crystallized a somewhat indefinite policy of progressive radicalism into a compaign for the rescue of the State from the control of the financial and public utility magnates who had quietly taken it over from an older and far more corrupt purely political management. The man in the street rallied to Martin Embree, as well where the street was a country town thoroughfare as where it was a city’s artery of trade, and the farmers of the north followed almost in a body and without much respect to party. These were unassimilated Americans; Scandinavians, a few Dutch and Italians, but mostly Germans. Martin Embree had the unbounded confidence of these elements, particularly the Germans. He had cultivated it assiduously, and by legitimate political methods. In and out of season he impressed them with their responsibility for the cleansing of politics, and for reform. Now, to your German-American, uplifted in the conviction of racial righteousness, reform is a word sanctified for his own uses. Reform means compelling other people to think as he thinks. Therefore he solemnly adopts it. Reform, to these Northern Tier farmers, meant Martin Embree. By this support alone, if he had enjoyed no other, he was too strong for the powers that were completely to dislodge. He was clean, honest, earnest, fervent, laborious, and the possessor of a direct and winning address. Too late, the “old gang” perceived that he had developed from a “cheap spellbinder” into a “dangerous demagogue”; and largely because they had so ill-advisedly permitted such part of the press as they controlled, to disseminate that telling speech of his. At least, they would n’t make that mistake again! Martin Embree was now too considerable a figure to be ignored in print. But no other man in the public life of Centralia was so rigorously “edited.”
To-day, Jeremy Robson foresaw, his own job would be one of reporting orally, rather than writing. This acting as political lookout he quite enjoyed; it gave him a flattering sense of being on the inside of things. Then, too, there was opportunity for finesse. If the speaker of the day got upon slippery ground, Jeremy would have his chance to trip him up editorially, perhaps. He knew that Embree would not resent this in him. It was part of the game, in which they were, for the present, opponents. The Senator’s good-humor and broad-minded acceptance of the matter was one of the qualities which Jeremy most ardently admired in him. And politically he was so right and decent and clear of vision! What would not Jeremy have given for a chance as political expert on a paper supporting Embree’s main policies, a progressive and independent paper such as the Bellair Journal, for example! Perhaps that would come in time; already The Journal had offered him a reporter’s job. Meanwhile he must, in fairness, be loyal to his employers. Embree himself would admit that. Any one would admit it, except a hare-brained Socialist like Milliken. Jeremy clung to that justification of loyalty.
Routine business was still in progress on the floor when Galpin of The Guardian came in and seated himself next to Jeremy. There was still a patch over his left eye. His broad and bony face wore, an expression of concerned expectation. .
“What’s Embree after this time?” Jeremy whispered to him.
“Us,” said Galpin.
“Editorial ‘we’? The Guardian? How?”
“Don’t know. Can’t pick up much. Martin don’t ever say much beforehand. Pulls his gun and shoots.”
“And Lord help the bull’s-eye!”
“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “I asked him this morning what’s what, and all he said was; ‘Better get ready to duck in the Press Gallery,’ with that smile of his that may mean fun and may mean murder. Look! There’s Slippery Selden Dana on the floor.”
“That means the P.-U. is in it.”
“Not necessarily. But it means something out of the ordinary. He is n’t spending Montrose Clark’s time on any picayune stuff.”
“You can’t blame Embree if he goes after the newspapers,” said The Record reflectively.
“Fool trick, though. They always get in the last wallop.”
“Look what a raw deal he gets, here in Fenchester. The best he gets from The Record is silent contempt, and The Guardian—well, I don’t know why he has n’t sued The Guardian for libel long ago.”
“What’d be the use?”
“You mean The Guardian is right in practically saying he’s a crook?”
“No. I guess he’s the nearest decent thing we’ve got in this rotten mess of politics,” said Galpin with the experienced political reporter’s cynical view of public men, “unless it’s Magnus Laurens.”
“Then why won’t they give him a fair shake? I don’t mind their going after him editorially. That’s opinion. But to cut him out of the news, that gets my goat a little.”
“Ay-ah? Well, you see, he’s gumming our game.”
“What ga—”
“The whole, dam’, slick, polite graft that makes the machine run so smooth and nice and turns out the pretty little dividends for the banks and the railroads and the big companies generally. Haven’t you seen into that millstone yet?”
“You talk as if you were really on Embree’s side.”
“Ay-ah. Why not?”
“But The Guard—”
“I’m a hired man,” said Galpin impassively.
“If you had a paper of your own—”
“Be a hired man just the same.”
“Who could boss you then?” asked Jeremy in surprise. “Same bunch that bosses The Record and The Guardian.”
“Could n’t a paper be run independent of them?”
“Never has been in this town.”
“But could n’t it?” persisted the other. “Would n’t it be fun to work on a paper like that!”
“Gee!” murmured Galpin. They were like two urchins savoring a golden and imaginative treat.
“Mr. President.”
The resonant tones of Martin Embree’s rich and effortless voice roused the reporters from their boyish vision. He stood tall, handsome, easy, confident, but his usually sunny face was grave, and he held in his hand a document, contrary to his custom. Before he had spoken five minutes to the hushed attention of floor and galleries, it became evident that his talk was centering and converging upon that document. His subject was the “cheese check” scandal which had roused the dairy farmers of his region to fury. He traced the steps whereby the commission men’s combine had sought legislation which would have rendered the producer almost helpless in their hands, touched upon alleged bribery in the lower House, referred to the part which two of the Fenchester banking institutions had played (“That’s why Dana was here; Montrose Clark’s in the banking game on the side,” whispered Galpin), and continued:
“For my own conscientious and repeated attempts to block this nefarious deal, I have been consistently derided as a silly reformer by one of the local newspapers, and denounced by the other in terms which, were circumstances otherwise, I should reply to by a suit for criminal libel. I am enabled to deal with The Fenchester Guardian, in a more effective, swifter, and more relevant manner. Will the clerk of the Senate kindly read this letter, which fell into my hands by a happy accident, and the authenticity of which will not be denied by its author?”
The clerk of the Senate received the document with a look of interest unusual in his stolid official bearing. He began to read:
“Editor’s Office of The Fenchester Evening Guardian: Undated. My dear Mr. Dorlon:—”
“The date is established as of last month by the envelope,” said Senator Embree.
Profiting by the interruption, the clerk ran his eye swiftly through the one-page letter; but, instead of resuming his reading, left his place and carried it to the presiding officer. Their heads bent over it close together. A whisper passed between them. Its sibilance, though not its purport, could be heard through the silenced chamber. The clerk of the Senate turned away, not toward his desk, but toward the curtained exit.
“Mr. Clerk!” Martin Embree’s voice was not raised by the iota of a tone; yet it stopped the man in his tracks. “Not one step out of my sight with that document.”
“The Senator will come to order. The Senator will address himself to the chair,” rebuked the President.
Embree’s arm rose, rigid as iron, until his stiffened hand pointed with all the menace of a weapon straight into the face of the discomposed presiding officer.
“Mr. President, I hold you responsible for the safety and integrity of that document. I ask you to direct the clerk to read it.”
“Read,” said the President after a moment of hesitation.
“‘My dear Mr. Dorlon,’” repeated the clerk: “‘I have yours of the 19th with directions for claiming the last payment from the Trust Co. Glad you approve the paper’s course and are satisfied with what we have done on the Cheese Commission Bill. Locker and Mayne are O.K. I turned over their balance to them. We can whip Smith into line; Cary, Sellers, and Gunderson, too, in time. In the Senate we owe a great deal to’” (the clerk’s voice faltered) “‘Bellows’” (the clerk’s name was Bellows). “‘Better look after him. Let me know when you come to the Capitol.
“‘Yours very truly, (Signed) A. M. Wymett.’”
Dead silence followed, in which the footsteps of the messenger returning the document to Senator Embree, sounded loud and hollow. Then a voice (unidentified) pronounced from the gallery in accents of intensest conviction: “Well, Iamdamned!” Which inspired another voice (also unidentified) to adjure solemnly, “Burn this letter.” The Senate found relief in nervous, shrill, tittering laughter. “Will the papers printthat?” shouted somebody, and the presiding officer recovering, hammered vehemently for order.
“Gentlemen,” concluded Martin Embree, the damnatory letter raised to the level of his head, “I leave to this honorable body the determination as between the Honorable A. M. Wymett, editor and proprietor of The Fenchester Guardian, and myself.”
He sat down.
Jeremy turned to his fellow reporter, with questioning eyes.
“Knock-out,” said Galpin.
“Criminal charge, is n’t it?”
“Guess so. Anyhow, it’s good-bye Guardian. So far as Wymett’s concerned, anyway. The crooked hound!”
“Did n’t you know he was doing their dirty work?”
“I knew he took orders. I didn’t know he took money. We all take orders. You’ll take orders when you suppress this story.”
“Can it be suppressed?”
“It’s got to be. Honor of the profession and all that sort of thing. Let’s get out. I want some air.”
Outside they walked along for a block, before either spoke. Jeremy said: “Andy, how’s this going to affect you?”
“Don’t know. Shut up about it, can’t you! Talk about something else.”
“All right,” agreed the other cheerfully. “I’ll talk about myself. I’ve got a chance to make a change. What do you think of editorial writing?”
“Nice, soft job. If you can do it. I could n’t.”
“I can.”
“Go to it, then. Only I would n’t stick to it.”
“Why not?”
Galpin rubbed his shaggy head. “Oh, I dunno. Too much preaching of the other fellow’s doctrine, I guess.”
Jeremy’s mind reverted to Milliken’s view and he wondered how nearly the two agreed. Certainly between preaching and the profession to which the Socialist had bitterly likened editorializing, yawned the widest of gulfs. He stated Milliken’s characterization.
“Rough stuff,” commented Galpin. “I guess there’s something in it, though. Ay-ah. I get his point.”
“Then you would n’t take the job?”
“You might try it on for a while. But as a permanency—well, it seems to me a fellow that’s settled down to write editorials for another man all his life has sort of given up.”
“Given up? What?”
“Everything. He’s licked. Ay-ah. He’s a beaten man. He’s under contract to think another man’s thoughts and make other folks think ’em if he can.”
“Are n’t we doing that as reporters?”
“Not so much. Facts ain’t thoughts. You can report and keep your mind independent. That’s why I climb off the desk whenever I can, like to-day. Whew! I came near having Mr. Wymett go along with me. He was held up at the last minute.”
Galpin turned into his office. Jeremy went to The Record to report to Wackley and was turned over to Mr. Farley.
“Nothing about The Guardian can be published, of course,” prescribed that diplomat, who had already been in communication with the local leaders. “Give us half a column of the rest. And go light. It’s ticklish ground.”
After finishing, Jeremy went out for a long and thoughtful walk. On his return home he found a letter with the letterhead of Messrs. Hunt & Hunt, Attorneys, of Philadelphia. The firm begged to inform him that, with due allowance for taxes and fees, he was heir, under his great-aunt’s will, to the sum of $86,730.18.