CHAPTER II
CARMEL LEE had been told by everybody, ever since she could remember being told anything, that she was headstrong and impulsive. Her parents had impressed it upon her and, rather proudly, had disseminated the fact among the neighbors until it became a tradition in the little Michigan town where she was born. People held the idea that one must make allowances for Carmel and be perpetually ready to look with tolerance on outbursts of impulse. Her teachers had accepted the tradition and were accustomed to advise with her upon the point. The reputation accompanied her to the university, and only a few weeks before, upon her graduation, the head of the Department of Rhetoric (which included a course in journalism) spent an entire valuable hour beseeching her to curb her willfulness and to count as high as fifty before she reached a decision.
So Carmel, after being the victim of such propaganda for sixteen or seventeen years, could not be censured if she believed it herself. She had gotten to be rather afraid of Carmel and of what Carmel might do unexpectedly. Circumspection and repression had become her watchwords, and the present business of her life was to look before she leaped. She had made a vow of deliberation. As soon as shefound herself wanting to do something she became suspicious of it; and latterly, with grim determination, she had taken herself in hand. Whenever she became aware of a desire to act, she compelled herself to sit down and think it over. Not that this did a great deal of good, but it gave her a very pleasing sensation of self-mastery. As a matter of fact, she was not at all introspective. She had taken the word of bystanders for her impulsiveness; it was no discovery of her own. And now that she was schooling herself in repression, she did not perceive in the least that she failed to repress. When she wanted to do a thing, she usually did it. The deliberation only postponed the event. When she forced herself to pause and scrutinize a desire, she merely paused and scrutinized it—and then went ahead and did what she desired.
It may be considered peculiar that a girl who had inherited a newspaper, as Carmel had done, should have paid so cursory a first visit. It would have been natural to rush into the shop with enthusiasm and to poke into corners and to ransack the place from end to end, and to discover exactly what it was she had become owner of. However, Carmel merely dropped in and hurried away.... This was repression. It was a distinct victory over impulse. She wanted to do it very much, so she compelled herself to turn her back and to go staidly to lunch at the hotel.
She ate very little and was totally unaware of the sensation she created in the dining room, especiallyover at the square table which was regarded as the property of visiting commercial travelers. It was her belief that she gave off an impression of dignity such as befitted an editor, and that a stern, businesslike air sat upon her so that none could mistake the fact that she was a woman of affairs. Truthfulness compels it to be recorded that she did not give this impression at all, but quite another one. She looked a lovely schoolgirl about to go canoeing with a box of bonbons on her lap. The commercial travelers who were so unfortunate as to be seated with their back toward her acquired cricks in their necks.
After dinner (in a day or two she would learn not to refer to it as luncheon) she compelled herself to go up to her room and to remain there for a full fifteen minutes. After this exercise, so beneficial to her will, she descended and walked very slowly to the office of theFree Press. Having thus given free rein to her bent for repression, she became herself andpounced. She pounced upon the office; she pounced upon the shop. She made friends with the cylinder press much as an ordinary individual would make friends with a nice dog, and she talked to the little job press as to a kitten and became greatly excited over the great blade of the paper cutter, and wanted Tubal to give her an instant lesson in the art of sticking type. For two hours she played with things. Then, of a sudden, it occurred to her to wonder if a living could be made out of the outfit.
It was essential that the paper should provide her with a living, and that it should go about the businessof doing so almost instantly. At the moment when Carmel first set foot in Gibeon she was alone in the world. Old Man Nupley had been her last remaining relative. And—what was even more productive of unease of mind—she was the owner of exactly seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents!
Therefore she pounced upon the records of the concern and very quickly discovered that Old Man Nupley had left her no placer mine out of which she could wash a pan of gold before breakfast. She had, she found, become the owner of the right to pay off a number of pressing debts. The plant was mortgaged. It owed for paper; there were installments due on the job press; there were bills for this, that, and the other thing which amounted to a staggering total....
She was not daunted, however, until she examined the credit side of the affair. The year had brought theFree Pressa grand total of five hundred and sixty-one paid subscriptions; the advertising, at the absurd rate of fifteen cents an inch, had been what politicians call scattering; and the job work had hardly paid for the trouble of keeping the dust off the press. The paper was dead on its feet, as so many rural weeklies are. She could not help thinking that her uncle Nupley had died in the nick of time to avoid bankruptcy.
It is worth recording that Carmel did not weep a tear of disappointment, nor feel an impulse to walk out of the place and go the thousand miles back to Michigan to take the job of teaching English in thehome high school. No. The only emotion Carmel felt was anger. Her eyes actually glinted, and a red spot made its appearance upon each cheek. She had arrived in Gibeon with a glowing illusion packed in her trunk; unkind fact had snatched it away and replaced it with clammy reality.
She got up from her desk and walked into the shop, where Tubal was pretending to be busy.
“Gibeon is the county seat, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes ’m.”
“How many people live here?”
“We claim two thousand. Ol’ Man Nupley allowed the’ was four thousand in the township.”
“Then” (her manner put Tubal in the wrong at once and compelled him to fumble about for a defense) “why have we only a little more than five hundred subscribers?”
“Wa-al, one thing or another, seems as though. Folks never took to this paper much.... Mostly they take in theStandardfrom over to Litchfield.”
“Why?”
Tubal shifted the blame to Gibeon. “Seems like this hain’t much of a town.... It’s a dum funny town. I guess folks didn’t set much store by this paper on account of Abner Fownes.”
“Abner Fownes? Who is he, and what has he to do with it?”
“Abner,” said Tubal, “comes clost to bein’ a one-man band. Uh huh!... Owns the saw mills, owns half of Main Street, owns the Congo church and the circuit judge and the selectmen, and kind of claimsto own all the folks that lives here.... Ol’ Man Nupley was a kind of errand boy of his’n.”
Carmel’s intuition carried her to the point. “And the people didn’t take this paper because they didn’t trust it. That was it, wasn’t it—because this Abner Fownes—owned Uncle Nupley.”
“I calc’late,” said Tubal, “you’re twittin’ on facts....” He chuckled. “Las’ fall the folks kind of riz ag’in’ Abner and dum nigh trompled on him at election time. Yes, sir. Made a fight fer it, but they didn’t elect nobody but one sheriff. Good man, too.... But Abner was too slick for ’em and he run off with all the other offices.... He holds a chattel mortgage onto this plant.”
“Is he a bad man?”
“Wa-al I dunno’s a feller could call him bad. Jest pig-headed, like, and got the idee nobody knows nothin’ but him.Mynotion is he gits bamboozled a lot. The Court House crowd tickles his ribs and makes him work for ’em. No, he hain’t bad. Deacon, and all that.”
“The local politicians flatter him and make use of the power his money gives him, is that it?”
“You hit the nail plumb on the head.”
“Who is therealboss?”
“Wa-al now, that’s kind of hard to say. Kind of a ring. Half a dozen of ’em. Calc’late Supervisor Delorme is close to bein’ the queen bee.”
She could visualize Abner Fownes, smug, fatuous, in a place of power which he did not know how to use, a figurehead and cat’s-paw for abler and wickedermen.... It must be confessed that her interest in him was not civic, but personal. He was, at that moment, of no importance to her except as the man who held a chattel mortgage on her plant and whose influence over her uncle had withered the possible prosperity of the paper.
She was saying to herself: “I’ve got to find a way. I’ve got to make a success of this. I can’t go back home and admit I couldn’t do it.... Everybody said I couldn’t run a paper. But I can. Ican.”
The field was there, a prosperous town with a cultivated countryside to the south and rich forest lands to north and west. There was a sufficient population to support well a weekly paper; there was all of Main Street, two dozen merchants large and small, whose advertising patronage should flow in to theFree Press.
“What it needs,” she told herself, “is somebody to get behind and push.”
As a matter of fact she was convinced the failure of the paper was not due to Abner Fownes, nor to politics or outside influences, but to the lack of initiative and ability of her uncle. So much of the town as she had seen was rather pleasing; it had no appearance of resting over subterranean caverns of evil, nor had the men and women she saw on the streets the appearance of being ground down by one man’s wealth, or of smarting under the rule of an evil political ring. On the contrary, it seemed an ordinary town, full of ordinary people, who lived ordinary lives in reasonable happiness. She discountedTubal’s disclosures and jumped to a conclusion. No, she told herself, if she proved adequate, there was no reason why she could not succeed where Uncle Nupley failed.
The telephone interrupted her reflections and she lifted the receiver.
“Is this theFree Press?” asked a voice.
“Yes.”
“Wait a moment, please.”
After some delay another voice, a large, important voice, repeated the question, and Carmel admitted a second time the identity of the paper.
“This,” said the voice, evidently impressed by the revelation it was making, “is Abner Fownes.”
“Yes,” said Carmel.
“Are you the young woman—Nupley’s niece?”
“I am.”
“Will you step over to my office at once, then. I want to see you?”
Carmel’s eyes twinkled and her brows lifted. “Abner Fownes,” she said. “The name has a masculine sound. Your voice is—distinctly masculine?”
“Eh?... What of it?”
“Why,” said Carmel, “the little book I studied in school says that when a gentleman wishes to see a lady he goes to her. I fear I should be thought forward if I called on you.”
“Not at all.... Not at all,” said the voice, and Carmel knew she had to deal with a man in whom resided no laughter.
“I shall be glad to see you whenever you find itconvenient to call,” she said—and hung up the receiver.
As she turned about she saw a young man standing outside the railing, a medium-sized young man who wore his shoulders slightly rounded and spectacles of the largest and most glittering variety. The collar of his coat asked loudly to be brushed and his tie had the appearance of having been tied with one hand in a dark bedroom. He removed his hat and displayed a head of extraordinarily fine formation. It was difficult to tell if he were handsome, because the rims of his spectacles masked so much of his face and because his expression was one of gloomy wrath. Carmel was tempted to laugh at the expression because it did not fit; it gave the impression of being a left-over expression, purchased at a reduction, and a trifle large for its wearer.
“May I ask,” he said, in a voice exactly suited to his stilted diction, “if you are in charge of this—er—publication?”
“I am,” said Carmel.
“I wish,” said the young man, “to address a communication to the citizens of this village through the—er—medium of your columns.”
So this, thought Carmel, was the sort of person who wrote letters to newspapers. She had often wondered what the species looked like.
“On what subject?” she asked.
“Myself,” said he.
“It should be an interesting letter,” Carmel said, mischievously.
The young man lowered his head a trifle and peered at her over the rims of his glasses. He pursed his mouth and wrinkled one cheek, studying her as a naturalist might scrutinize some interesting, but not altogether comprehensible, bug. Evidently he could not make up his mind as to her classification.
“I fancy it will be found so,” he said.
“May I ask your name?”
He fumbled in an inner pocket and continued to fumble until it became an exploration. He produced numerous articles and laid them methodically upon the railing—a fountain pen, dripping slightly, half a dozen letters, a large harmonica, a pocket edition of Plato’sRepublic, a notebook, several pencils, and a single glove. He stared at the glove with recognition and nodded to it meaningly, as much as to say: “Ah, there you are again.... Hiding as usual.” At last he extracted a leather wallet and from the wallet produced a card which he extended toward Carmel.
Before she read it she had a feeling there would be numerous letters upon it, and she was not disappointed. It said:
Evan Bartholomew Pell, A.B., Ph.D., LL.D., A.M.
“Ah!” said Carmel.
“Yes,” said the young man with some complacency.
“And your letter.”
“I am,” he said, “or, more correctly, Iwas, superintendent of schools in this village. There are, as you know, three schools only one ofwhich gives instruction in the so-called high-school branches.”
“Indeed,” said Carmel.
“I have been removed,” he said, and stared at her with lips compressed. When she failed to live up to his expectations in her manifestations of consternation, he repeated his statement. “I have been removed,” he said, more emphatically.
“Removed,” said Carmel.
“Removed. Unjustly and unwarrantably removed. Autocratically and tyrannically removed. I am a victim of nepotism. I have, I fancy, proven adequate; indeed, I may say it is rare to find a man of my attainments in so insignificant a position.... But I have been cast out upon the streets arbitrarily, that a corrupt and self-seeking group of professional politicians may curry favor with a man more corrupt than themselves. In short and in colloquial terms, I have been kicked out to provide a place for Supervisor Delorme’s cousin.”
Carmel nodded. “And you wish to protest.”
“I desire to lay before the public my ideas of the obligation of the public toward its children in the matter of education. I desire to protest against glaring injustice. I desire to accuse a group of men willing to prostitute the schools to the level of political spoils. I wish to protest at being set adrift penniless.”
His expression as he uttered the word “penniless” was one of helpless bewilderment which touched Carmel’s sympathy.
“Penniless?” she said.
“I am no spendthrift,” he said, severely. “I may say that I am exceedingly economical. But I have invested my savings, and—er—returns have failed to materialize from the investment.”
“What investment?”
The young man eyed her a moment as if he felt her to be intruding unwarrantably in his private concerns, but presently determined to reply.
“A certain gold mine, whose location I cannot remember at the moment. It was described as of fabulous wealth, and I was assured the return from my investment of five hundred dollars would lift me above the sordid necessity of working for wages.... I regret to say that hitherto there has been no material assurance of the truth of the statements made to me.”
“Poor lamb!” said Carmel under her breath.
“I beg your pardon?”
Carmel shook her head. “So you are—out of a job—and broke?” she said.
“Broke,” he said, lugubriously, “is an exceedingly expressive term.”
“And what shall you do?”
He looked about him, at his feet, through the door into the shop, under the desk, at the picture on the wall in a helpless, bewildered way as if he thought his future course of action might be hiding some place in the neighborhood.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said.
Carmel considered. Inexperienced as she was,new to the intrigues of Gibeon, she was able to perceive how the professor’s letter was loaded with dynamite—not for him, but for the paper which published it. Notwithstanding, it was her impulse to print it. Indeed, her mind was firmly made up to print it. Therefore she assumed an attitude of deliberation, as she had schooled herself to do.
“If you give me the letter,” she said, “I will read it and consider the wisdom of making it public.”
“I shall be obliged to you,” he said, and turned toward the door. Midway he paused. “If,” he said, “you chance to hear of a position—as teacher or otherwise—to which I may be adapted, I shall be glad to have you communicate with me.”
He moved again toward the door, opened it, paused again, and turned full to face Carmel. Then he made a statement sharply detached from the context, and astonishing not so much for the fact it stated as because of the man who stated it, his possible reasons for making the statement, and the abruptness of the change of subject matter.
“Sheriff Churchill has disappeared,” he said. Having made the statement, he shut the door after him and walked rapidly up the street.