MR. BIRDLIP was a good old man, of unimpeachable simplicity. He had achieved enormous wealth in an honourable business, and then found (to his mild distress) that the great traffic he had built up conducted itself automatically. He had, in a way, been gently shouldered out of his own nest by the capable men whose fortunes he had made. But his zealous and frugal spirit required some sort of problem to feed upon, and he delighted his heart by owning a newspaper.The Evening Lenswas his toy and the child of his dotage.
So the Persian rugs and walnut panelling of his private suite in the huge Birdlip Building saw him rarely. He was supremely happy in the dingy sanctum at the back of the oldLensoffice, where the hum of the presses and the racket of the city room (which he still, by an innocent misunderstanding, called the “sitting room”) delighted his guileless heart. He would sit turning over the pages of each edition as it came upstairs (putting his second finger up to his tongue before he turned each leaf) and poring industriously over the market reports, the comics, and the Woman's Page. With his pink cheeks, his dapper little figure in a brown suit and cream-coloured waistcoat, and his eager, shy, chirping manner, he was very like a robin. Although he was full of gigantic schemes, which he broached naively in the editorial council every now and then, he never wittingly interfered with his editor-in-chief, in whom he had full confidence. But his gentle and jejune mind had a disastrous effect on the paper no less. Almost unconsciously the Lens was written and edited down to his standard, as a roomful of adults will amiably prattle so as to carry along a child in the conversation.
Mr. Birdlip's amazing success in his original field had been due partly to his decent sagacity, honesty, and persistence, and partly to his sheer fortune in finding (at the very outset of his enterprise) several men of rugged ability, who became the pearls in his simple oyster-shell. As a result of this, it had become his fixed mental habit to believe that somewhere, some day, he would encounter the man or men who would make theLensthe greatest newspaper in the country. This, indeed, was his candid ambition, and he never went anywhere without keeping his eyes open for the anticipated messiah.
He was greatly taken by broad primitive effects: when he noticed that a Chicago daily always called itself “The World's Greatest Newspaper” he was marvellously struck by the power of this slogan, and lamented that he had not thought of it first. The question as to whether the slogan were true or not never occurred to him. He liked to have the keynote sentences in the leading editorial emphasized in blackface type, so that there might be no danger of any one's missing the point. Desiring for his beloved sheet “this man's art and that man's scope,” as the sonnet puts it, every now and then he thought he had discovered the prodigy, and some new feature would be added to the paper at outrageous expense, only to be quietly shovelled out six months or a year later. In the meantime, the auditor was growing very gray, and even Mr. Birdlip's quick blue eye was sometimes hazed with faint perplexity when he studied the circulation charts. Perhaps it would have been kinder if someone could have told him that a boyhood spent in splitting infinitives is not sufficient training for one to become an Abraham Lincoln of the newspaper business.
As he trotted in and out of theLensoffice, with his rosy air of confidence and his disarming simplicity (which made his white hair seem a wanton cruelty on the part of Time, that would wither a man's cells while his mind was still on all fours), Mr. Birdlip was the object of furtive but very sharp study on the part of some cynical journalists whom he hired. It was a genuine amazement to Sanford, the dramatic critic, that the owner was so entirely unaware of his (Sanford's) abilities, which certainly (he thought) called for a salary of more than sixty dollars a week. Sanford often meditated about this, and not entirely in secret. In fact, it was generally admitted among the younger members of the staff, when they gathered at Ventriloquo's for lunch, that the Old Man was immaculately ignorant of all phases of the newspaper business. While the spaghetti and mushrooms cheered the embittered gossips, merry and quaint were the quips sped toward the unsuspecting target. Sanford's private grievance was that though for over a year he had been doing signed critiques of plays, which were really spirited and honest, not once had the Old Man condescended to mention them, or to show any sign of uttering anEcce Homoin his direction. As far as he was concerned, he felt that the weekly battle of Manila Envelopes was a conspicuous rout, and he frequently rehearsed the exact tone in which he would some day say to the managing editor: “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” Little did Sanford realize that the only time Mr. Birdlip had attempted to read the “Exits and Entrances” column he had met the name of Æschylus, had faltered, and retreated upon the syndicated sermon by the Rev. Frank Crane.
“I saw 'Ruddigore' the other evening,” said Sanford to his cronies, as they called for a second round of coffee. “There's a line in it that describes old Birdie fore, aft, and amidships. Something like this: 'He is that particular variety of good old man to whom the truth is always a refreshing novelty'.”
They complauded. Rightly or wrongly, these high-spirited and sophisticated young men had decided that Mr. Birdlip's naïveté was so refreshingly complete that it gave them an aesthetic pleasure to contemplate it. It had the exquisite beauty of any absolute perfection. Their employer's latest venture, which had been to pay $200,000 for the exclusive right to publish and syndicate the mysterious formulae of a leading Memory Course, had shocked them very greatly.
It touched them in a tender spot to know that there had been all that money lying round the office, unused, which was now to be squandered (as they put it) on charlatanry, when they felt that they might just as well have had some of it.
“The Old Man is always looking for some special stunt, and trying to discover someone on the outside,” said one. “He can't see the material right under his nose.”
“It's really rather pathetic: he's crazy to get out a great newspaper, but he hasn't the faintest idea how to do it.”
“Yes, give him credit for sincerity. It isn't just circulation he wants.”
“Circulation's easy enough, if that's what you're after. The three builders of circulation are Sordid, Sensational, and Sex—”
“And the greatest of these is Sex.”
“Oh, he's decent enough. He won't pander.”
“He panders to stupidity. He's fallen for this Memory bunk. And when he finds that's a flivver, he'll try something else, equally fatuous. He's making the oldLensridiculous.”
They smoked awhile, meditatively.
“What I would like to figure out,” said Sanford, “is some way of making an impression on the Old Man. I've got to get more money. The trouble—some part of it is, I feel instinctively that he and I live in different worlds. We hardly even talk the same language. Well, there's no chance of his learning my way of thinking; so I suppose I'll have to learn his.”
“He's the man who puts the nil in the Manila envelope,” said one of the others.
“As far as we are concerned, yes. But there's plenty of the stuff going round on Fridays for the kind of people he understands.”
“He seems to be an absent-minded old bird. When I talk to him, it's as though I were trying to speak through a fog.”
“It looks to me as though his mind had overstayed its leave of absence.”
“He likes the kind of men who, as he says, 'have both feet on the ground'.”
“Yes, but you've got to have at least one foot in the air if you're going to get anywhere.”
“See here,” said the literary editor, who was more tolerant than the others. “What's the use of panning the Old Man? He's trying to put the paper over, just as hard as we are. Maybe harder. But he doesn't know. And I believe he knows he doesn't know. I think the chief trouble is, they all knuckle down to him so. They're scared of him. They think the only way they can hold their jobs is by agreeing with him. If someone could only put him wise——”
“But howcanyou put him wise? He doesn't see anything unless it's laid out for him in a strip cartoon or a full-page ad. The kind of thing that interests him is the talk he hears in a Pullman smoker or club car.”
“That's a fact. You know he always says he likes to go travelling, because he picks up ideas from people on the train. 'Of course I place you! Mr. Mowbray Monk of Seattle. And is your Rotary Club still rotating?' That kind of talk.”
“I think you're right,” said Sanford. “He doesn't see us because we have too much protective colouring. We are only the patient drudges. We don't talk that Pullman palaver about Big Business. We've got to learn to talk his language. What is that phrase of Bacon's—we've got to bring ourselves home to his business and bosom——”
“Let's get back to the office,” said the disillusioned literary editor. “That's the way to bring home the bacon.”
A few days later Sanford was at his desk, clipping and pasting press agents' flimsies for the Saturday Theatre Page. This was a task which he hated above all others, and he was meditating sourly on the scarcity of truth in human affairs. At this moment Mr. Birdlip happened to pass along the corridor outside the editorial rooms. Sanford heard him say:
“Miss Flaccus, will you get me a seat in the club car, ten o'clock train to-morrow? I've got to run over to New York to take lunch with Mr. Montaigne.”
Sanford put down his shears, relit his pipe, and began to pursue a fugitive idea round the suburbs of his mind. Presently he drew out his check book from a drawer and did some calculating on a sheet of paper. “A hundred dollars,” he said to himself. “I guess it's worth it.”
The following morning, dressed in a new suit and with shoes freshly burnished, Sanford was at the terminal twenty minutes before train time. With him was a young man carrying a leather portfolio. To observe the respectful demeanour of this young man, no one would have suspected that he was Sanford's young brother-in-law, rejoicing in cutting his classes at college for a day's masquerading. Sanford bought some cigars (a form of smoking which he detested) and carefully removed the bands from all but one of them.
Presently Mr. Birdlip appeared, cheerfully trotting up the stairs. Sanford and his companion followed discreetly. As Mr. Birdlip went through the gate, they were close behind. Entering the club car, Mr. Birdlip sat down and opened a morning paper. Sanford and his companion were prompt to take the two adjoining seats. Sanford began to look overSystemandPrinters' Ink, and perhaps his interest in these vigorous journals was not wholly unfeigned, for it was the first time he had studied them. The young man beside him drew out a mass of papers from his leather bag, and in a moment of stillness just before the train started said in a clear voice:
“Pardon, sir, but there is some important dictation here that ought to be attended to.”
Sanford assumed the air of a man wearied with tremendous affairs. .
“Very well, what comes first?”
“The New YorkBudgethas wired for an answer in regard to their proposition.”
Sanford blew a luxurious whiff of smoke. “Take this letter: My dear Mr. Ralston. Replying to your inquiries as to whether I would be willing to take charge of the editorial page of theBudgetfor a few months, to put the paper on its feet, I am willing to consider the matter, and would be pleased to discuss it with you if you will run over to see me. I am very busy just now, and could not possibly undertake the work for some weeks. I have been retained in an advisory capacity by a big Western syndicate which was badly in need of some circulation building; and until I can put their paper up to a half-million figure I have not much spare time. Their paper has gone up a couple of hundred thousand since I mapped out a campaign for them, but I would not feel justified in discontinuing my services to them until these gains are properly consolidated. I will be in my office at ten o'clock next Tuesday morning if you care to see me. Very truly yours.”
Mr. Birdlip was hidden behind his paper, but something in the angle at which the sheets were held led Sanford to believe that the old gentleman was listening.
“Very well, Edwards,” he said. “What's next?”
“Here's this letter from Lord Southpeak of the LondonGazetteasking if he can see you when he comes over next month.”
“Cable Southpeak I shall be very happy to see him if he gets here before the fifteenth. I am going on my vacation then.”
The attentive Edwards scribbled rapidly in his notebook.
“Just pick out the most urgent stuff,” said Sanford. “I don't care to bother with anything that isn't really pressing. I've got an important conference on in New York to-day, and I want to keep my mind clear. Blackwit of the Associated Press has asked me to say a few words to his directors on 'Journalism as a Function of Public Conscience'.”
Edwards ran rapidly through an imposing mass of documents.
“That long-distance call from the ChicagoVox,” he said. “You promised to give Mr. Groton some word this morning.”
“Call him up when we get to Penn. Station,” said Sanford. “Tell him I can't give him any decision yet awhile. Tell him that loyalty to my own city will keep me there for some time. You might tell him that I believe theLenshas great possibilities if properly handled. I should not care to build up the property of a Chicago paper while there is a chance of theLensbecoming the great evening paper of the East.”
“Yes, sir,” said Edwards, jotting down what, might pass for stenography.
The train was running smoothly through level green country, and Mr. Birdlip laid down his paper on his lap. Sanford was ready to catch his eye.
“Good morning, Mr. Birdlip,” he said, genially.
“Good morning,” said the owner of theLens, whose bright gaze exhibited a lively tincture of interest.
“Here are the typed notes of your remarks on 'Newspaper Circulation as a Byproduct of the Multiplication Table',” said Edwards, in a loud voice.
“You can let those wait,” said Sanford, carelessly. “I don't want to be bothered with anything else this morning. Give me a memorandum of anything that needs to be attended to when we get to New York.” He turned to Mr. Birdlip. “I find that in these busy days one has to attend to some of one's work even on the train. It is about the only place where one is never interrupted.”
“Did I hear you say something about Circulation?” said Mr. Birdlip. “Are you specially interested in that problem?”
“I have given it a good deal of thought,” said Sanford. “But I would hardly dignify it by calling it a problem. It is perfectly simple. It is purely a matter of taking the right attitude toward it. So many newspaper proprietors regard it merely as a problem in addition. Now it should be considered rather as a matter of multiplication. Instead of trying to add ten to your figures, why not multiply by ten? The result is so much more satisfactory.”
This sounded so plausible that Mr. Birdlip felt ashamed to ask how it was to be done.
“Will you have a cigar, sir?” asked Sanford, handing out the only one with a band on it. Mr. Birdlip accepted it, and looked as though he were about to ask a question. Sanford went on rapidly.
“Speaking of circulation,” he said, “when I am consulted I am always surprised to note that newspaper proprietors are so prone to view the matter merely as a question of distribution; of—well, of merchandising,” he added, as his eye fell upon that word in his copy ofSystem. “Indeed it rests upon quite another basis. The essence of merchandising” (he repeated the word with relish, noting its soothing effect on his employer) “is what?”
He made a dramatic pause, and Mr. Birdlip, carried away, wondered what indeed was the essence.
“The essence of merchandising,” said Sanford (he smote the arm of his chair, and leaned forward in emphasis), “and by merchandising I mean of course in the modern sense, merchandising on a big scale, is nothing but Confidence. Confidence, an impalpable thing, a state of mind. Now, sir, what is it that upbuilds circulation? It is Public Confidence. The assurance on the part of the public that the newspaper is reliable. It is a secret and inviolable conviction on the part of the reader that the integrity and enterprise of the paper are beyond cavil, in other words, unimpeachable. In order to create the Will-to-Purchase on the part of the prospect, in order to beget that desirable state of mind, there must be a state of mind in the paper itself. Note that wordMind. Now what is the Mind of the paper? I always ask every newspaper owner who consults me, what is the Mind of his paper?”
Without waiting for Mr. Birdlip to be embarrassed by his inability to answer this question, the ecstatic Sanford continued:
“The Mind of the paper is, of course, the Editorial Department. How subtle, how delicate, how momentous, is that function of commenting on the great affairs of the world! As I said in an address to a Rotary club recently, of what use to have all the mechanical perfections ever invented unless your editors are the right men? Walter Whitman, the efficiency engineer, said: 'Produce great persons: the rest follows.' That is the kind of production that counts most. Get great personalities for your editors, and watch the circulation rise. Of course the right kind of editors must be very highly paid.”
This was a strange doctrine to Mr. Birdlip, who never read the editorial page of his own paper, and secretly wondered how the editors found so much to write about.
“The great error that so many newspaper owners make,” said Sanford, sonorously, “is to think of their product as they would of any other article of commerce which is turned out day by day, in standardized units, from a factory. A newspaper is not standardized. It is born anew every issue. It is not a manufacturing routine that puts it together: it is a human organism, built up out of human brains. Every unit is different. It depends not primarily on machinery but on human personalities. I cannot understand why it is that newspaper owners yearn for the finest and most modern presses, and yet are often content to staff their journals with second-rate men.”
“I agree with you,” said Mr. Birdlip. “It is all a question of getting the right man. That is one reason why I am so fond of travelling; I always meet up with new ideas. Now, sir (I am sorry I do not know your name, for your face is rather familiar; I think I must have met you at some Rotary club), you seem to me a man of forceful and aggressive character. You are the kind of man I should like to have on theLens, I heard you mention the paper to your secretary awhile back; you must be interested in it.”
Sanford was perfectly cool. “I might consider it,” he said.
“I think you would find theLensa pleasant paper to work on,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I flatter myself that the staff is a capable one, for the most part.”
“I should insist on being given a free hand,” said Sanford. “Perhaps the position of circulation manager——?”
“Let me think a moment,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I suppose I ought to visit with my editor-in-chief before firing any one to make room for you. But I must say I like the way you talk, straight from the shoulder, like that Dr. Cranium, you know. That's the sort of stuff we need.”
“Right!” cried Sanford. “If you always talk straight from the shoulder, you'll never talk through your hat.”
Mr. Birdlip relished this impromptu aphorism. “Well, now, let me see,” he said, pondering. “The editor-in-chief, the managing editor, the editorial writers—they're all pretty good men.”
“Of course I shouldn't care for a merely routine position,” said Sanford. “The only position I would consider would be one in which I could really build up circulation for you.” He was wondering inwardly whether to stand out for a ten thousand salary.
“Quite so,” said Mr. Birdlip. “I think I have it. How would you care to run a column? 'Straight From the Shoulder'—wouldn't that be a fine title?”
“Fine!” said Sanford, but not without a secret shudder. Still, he thought, gold can assuage anything; and he reflected on the rich, sedentary, and care-free life of a syndicated philosopher.
“Very well,” said the owner. “I've been looking around for a man with both feet on the ground——”
(“Both feet on the pay envelope is my idea,” said Sanford to himself.)
“And I think you're just the man I want. There's only one place in the paper I can think of that really needs a change. There's a fellow on the staff called Sanford, runs a kind of column, terrible stuff. I don't think he amounts to much. Now why couldn't you take his job?”
Sanford has never forgiven his brother-in-law for that curious strangled sound he emitted.
MR. EUSTACE VEAL was a manufacturer of cuspidors. His beautiful factory was one of the finest of its kind, equipped with complete automatic sprinklers, wire-glass windows, cafeteria on the top floor, pensions for superannuated employees, rosewood directors' dining room, mottoes from Orison Swett Marden on the weekly pay envelopes, and a clever young man in tortoise-shell spectacles hired at eighty dollars a week to write the house-organ (which was calledEl Cuspidorado).
Mr. Veal lived in the exclusive and clean-shaven suburb of Mandrake Park, where he had built a stucco mansion with Venetian blinds, a croquet lawn with a revolving spray on it on hot days, and a mansard butler. Here Mrs. Veal and the two Veal girls, Dora and Petunia, led the blameless life of theembonpointclasses. The electric lights in the bedrooms were turned on promptly at ten o'clock every night, except on the sixteen winter evenings when the Veals occupied their box at the opera. During “Rigoletto” or “Pagliacci” the uncomplaining Mr. Veal would sit in silence with his head against the thick red velvet curtain at the back of the box, thinking up new ways to get an order for ten thousand nickel-plated seamless number 13's from the Pullman Company.
Mr. Veal, hampered as he was by the restrictions of success, was still full of the enjoyment of life. He had written a little brochure on “The Cuspidor: Its Use and Abuse Since the Times of the Pharaohs,” which was very well spoken of in the trade. A morocco-bound copy lay on the console table in Mrs. Veal's salon. It was he who invented the papier-maché spittoon, and the collapsible paper “companion” for travelling salesmen. It was he who had presented a solid silver spittoon de luxe to the King of Siam when that worthy visited the United States. And it was his idea, too, to name the beautiful shining brass model, especially recommended for hotel lobbies, El Cuspidorado. This was a stroke of imaginative genius, and several rival manufacturers wept because they had not thought of it first.
The spittoon magnate's habits were regular and sane. He rose by alarm clock at seven. He bathed, shaved, brushed his teeth with the vertical motion recommended by the toothbrush advertisers, breakfasted on cereal and cream and poached eggs, with one cup of strong coffee; walked leisurely to the station, bought a paper, and caught the 8.13 train. He avoided the other men who wanted him to sit with them, took the fifth chair on the left-hand side of the smoking car, and just as the train started he lit his first cigar. His commutation ticket was always ready for the conductor to punch. He never kept others waiting, just as he hated to be kept waiting himself. After his ticket had been punched and put back into an alligator-hide pocketbook, he opened the paper and studied it faithfully until the train got to the terminal.
At the factory Mr. Veal's routine was equally well-ordered and uniform. At nine o'clock he reached his private office, greeted his secretary, and ran over the morning mail, which had been opened and lay on his desk. Then he went through his dictation, which was carefully (even if not grammatically) accomplished. The sales reports for the preceding day were brought to him. Then he discussed any matters requiring attention with his department heads, calling them in one by one. At a quarter after twelve he walked up to the Manufacturers' Club for lunch, after which he played one game of pool.
He was back at the office by half-past two, and gave his passionate and devoted attention to the salivary needs of the nation until five o'clock. He caught the 5.23 train back to Mandrake Park, sitting on the right-hand side of the smoker where the setting sun would not dazzle on his newspaper.
But one day, about the time of the March equinox, when young ladies put furry pussywillows on their typewriter desks, and bank tellers crack the shells of spring jokes through the brass railings, Mr. Veal's behaviour was so peculiar as to cause anxiety among his associates.
He had ridden on the train as usual, without showing any abnormal symptoms. But when he was next observed, walking down Vincent Street, there was a red spot on his cheekbones and his expression was savage. He entered a haberdasher's shop and asked to see some neckties. When the clerk put out a tray of silk scarves in rich, sober colours, such as are commonly worn by successful and middle-aged merchants, Mr. Veal swore and dashed them aside.
“Good Lord!” he cried, “I'm not going to a funeral! Things like that are worn by Civil War veterans. What do you think I am, seventy years old? Give me something with some snap to it!”
And he chose a lemon-tinted cravat with vorticist patterns of brown and purple. He tore off the dark gray tie he had on and substituted the gaudy new one.
At the next corner he passed a shoe-shop. He hesitated a moment at the plate-glass window, then he entered and glared at the brisk young puppet who came forward with a smirk. He displayed his elastic-sided boots of the floorwalker type (which he had worn for years on account of his corns) and asked to have them removed. When they were off his feet he threw them to the other end of the long, narrow room. “I want some russet shoes with cloth tops,” he said. “And some silk socks to match, the kind the men wear in the magazine ads.”
When he left the shop, his feet might have been taken for those of Charley Chaplin, or of an assistant advertising manager of a department store.
Mr. Veal reached his office nearly two hours late, and one of his office boys was instantly discharged for asking him whom he wanted to see. Indeed, in a new suit of violent black-and-white checks, and with a crush hat of velvety substance, he was almost unrecognizable. As he passed through the filing department a hush fell over the young ladies there. His secretary, looking nervously from her corner outside the private office, felt a tinglingscherzorun up and down the keyboard of her spine. Never before had she seen Mr. Veal wear flowers in his buttonhole, and as he swung the door of his office behind him, she sniffed the vibrating air. In the rich wake of cigar-fragrance always exhaled by her employer her sharp nostrils detected a new tang—the sweet scent of mignonette. Heavens! Was Mr. Veal using perfume?
Miss Stafford was an acute young woman. She had long been waiting the adroit moment to push her employer for a raise, which was indeed due her. She determined that this was the psychological day. When the sign of the Ram is ascendant in the zodiac, let employers tremble. This is when even the most faithful and long-enduring wage-earner dreams seditiously of a fatter manila envelope. Miss Stafford's typewriter had sung like a zither for a number of years, she had orchestrated many curious harmonies on it, and now she had reached the point where she was almost as indispensable to the business as Mr. Veal himself. She was carrying what the efficiency dopesters call the peak load.
The buzzer buzzed, and Miss Stafford hastened to the private office, nerving herself to throw cantilevers across the Rubicon.
To her surprise, Mr. Veal, instead of sitting glowering over the morning mail, was standing by the window, throwing a paper-weight in the air and failing to catch it. The sunlight blazing through the large windows seemed to surround his emphatic clothes with a prismatic fringe. To her amazement, instead of the customary brief and reserved greeting, he said:
“Hullo, Miss Stafford. Great weather, eh? Sorry I'm late, but I just couldn't keep my schedule this morning. Went out to buy myself some golf clubs. I think I'd better take up the game, don't you?”
He made a swing at an imaginary golf ball, and slipped on the polished floor, nearly falling down. He recovered himself.
“Here's some flowers for you,” he said, taking a bunch of daffodils from the desk. “Daffy-down-dillies, as the poets call 'em. Lovely flowers, hey? Now comes in the sweet of the year. What ho!”
He advanced toward her, and for one extraordinary moment she thought he was about to chuck her under the chin.
“Ask Mr. Foster to come in,” he said.
“Mr. Veal,” she said, nervously, “there's just one thing—I wanted to ask you about, my salary, don't you think, er, I think, it seems to me about time I had a raise. I've been here——”
“Bless my soul,” he said. “I never thought of it. Why, of course, you're right. Miss Stafford, how old would you say I am?”
Miss Stafford knew perfectly well that he was fifty-five, but she had learned the cunning of all women who have to manage men, whether those men be husbands, employers, or ticket scalpers.
“Why, Mr. Veal, in a good light and in your new suit, I should say about thirty-nine.”
“What are you getting now, Miss Stafford?”
“Thirty dollars.”
“Tell Mr. Mason to double it.”
The feminine mind moves in rapid zigzags, and Miss Stafford's first conscious and coherent thought was of a certain woollen sports suit she had seen in a window on Vincent Street marked $50.00.
“And by the way,” said Mr. Veal, “when you see Mr. Mason, tell him I've got a new motto for next week's pay envelopes. Here it is; I found it in the paper this morning. I don't know who wrote it—better have him credit it to Orison Swett Marden.”
He handed her a slip of paper, on which he had copied out:
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood:
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility.
—Orison Swett Marden (?)
“Before you call Mr. Foster,” said the secretary, “Mr. Schmaltz of the Pullman Company is here to see you; he arrived just before you came in. He says he wants to place a large order for the cuspidorados.”
“Send him in,” said Mr. Veal, chuckling. “Hello, Schmaltz,” he cried, as the customer entered. “How's this for weather?”
“Great stuff!” said Schmaltz. “Makes us old fellows feel almost young again, doesn't it?”
Mr. Veal's face grew dark. He aged ten years in the instant. He pointed morosely to a chair.
“Mr. Veal,” said the other, “we want to place an order for ten thousand of the cuspidorados. Can you give us the old price?”
“I cannot,” said Mr. Veal, shortly. “Materials have gone to the sky. I can't give you the—the old price. I'll give you a young price, a very young one indeed, based on the present state of the market. Eighteen and a quarter cents is the best I can do.”
Mr. Schmaltz raised racial hands. “Heavens!” he said, “you used to let us have them for fourteen and a half. Why, in the old days——”
Mr. Veal pounded the desk with his fist.
“If you use that worldoldagain, I'll assassinate you with a dish of ham!” he roared. “Great pigs' knuckles, what do you think this is, a home for the aged?”
After Mr. Schmaltz had gone Mr. Veal sent for Foster, the foreman of the manufacturing department.
“Well,” he said, “how about those machines?”
“Mr. Veal,” said Foster, “we'll have to replace at least six of those Victor stampers. They're so old they simply can't do the work. You know when one of those machines is over five years old——”
Mr. Veal was pointing to the door.
“Get out!” he said.
At lunch-time Mr. Veal went up to the club as usual. Swinging up the street, in the bright sun and pellucid air, he felt quite cheerful, and stopped to buy himself a rhinoceros cane. In the dining room of the club he met Edwards, and they sat down together.
“Hello, old man,” said Edwards. “You're looking chipper for a veteran. Played any golf yet this year?”
“I don't play,” said Mr. Veal.
“Don't you? That's a mistake. It's the only game for us older fellows. Of course we can't score like the youngsters; but still we can get round and have a deal of fun——”
Mr. Veal clenched his fists. Spilling his soup, he leaped up and rushed from the room. He seized his coat and hat, forgetting the new cane, and fled to the nearest Turkish bath.
And all because, when going downstairs in the railway terminal that morning, he had heard a man behind him say to another:
“There goes Veal! He's beginning to look old, isn't he?”
It was the first time in his life Mr. Veal had heard the damnable adjective applied to himself in earnest.
Wait untilyourturn comes!
WHEN Judy Cronin first saw the topless towers of Manhattan rising into the lilac vagueness of a foggy winter morning she passed into a numb and frightened daze. Standing on the steerage deck of theCeltic, she peered tremulously at those fantastic impossible profiles of stone. Perhaps you don't know what it is to be thrown, ignorant and timid, into a place where everything is utterly strange—particularly a place as huge, violent, and hasty as New York. Judy, aged twenty-one, from a little village near Queenstown, was incapable of distinguishing, in the roaring voice of the city, that undertone of helpful kindness that is really there. On the same steamer came the widow of a famous Irish recusant and hungerstriker, and there were ten thousand people massed in West Street to cheer her. Judy heard the shouts of the crowd, and saw the lines of policemen on the pier. There was some of that quiet but menacing scuffling with which the various branches of the English-speaking world show their esteem for each other. Judy was not familiar with that definition of a patriot as one who makes trouble for his harmless fellow-citizens; but it looked as though she was blundering into some more of the tribulations they had had at home.
At last her sister Connie found her, sitting white and miserable on her very small trunk, clutching her imitation-silver coin-purse. Connie had been in New York for a couple of years, and it gave her a homesick throb to see that coin-purse—one of those little metal pocketbooks with slots to hold gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns. Father Daly had given it to Judy, years ago, but it had never had gold in the little sockets until Connie sent over the passage money to bring Judy to New York.
The city flashed by like a current-events film. Judy found herself in a friendly lodging-house in Brooklyn, kept by an Irishwoman who had been kind to Connie. Her sister then explained matters. Her own employers, with whom she had a position too good to abandon, had arranged to go South for the latter part of the winter. They had already delayed leaving so that Connie could meet her sister and get her settled. They had given Connie a few days' holiday for that purpose.
Therefore Judy must get a place as soon as possible. And that very afternoon the sisters (Judy still in a kind of dreadful dream) went to the office of a Brooklyn newspaper to insert an advertisement.
A great many people were watching theSituations Wantedcolumns, and the next evening, at supper-time, Mrs. Leland called up the lodging-house number, which had been given in the ad. Connie went to the telephone. Mrs. Leland had a pleasant voice and “talked like gentry”, Connie said. She lived in Heathwood, Long Island, which is some twenty miles from town, and wanted a nurse to take care of two children. Connie agreed to take Judy out to Heathwood the next morning, to see if they could come to terms. Judy was inexperienced, but Mrs. Leland liked her looks. In short: by the time Judy had been in America three days, she was installed at Mrs. Leland's home in the country; and a few days later Connie had gone off to Florida.
Now Judy was really very fortunate in these random proceedings, for she had found a good home under an exceptionally kind and understanding mistress. And therefore perhaps it was unreasonable of her to be so unhappy. But no one has ever demonstrated that human affairs are much controlled by reason. Judy was dumbly and piteously miserable. She was homesick and lonely, and half-mad with strangeness. She was not really slow-witted; but the confusion of her spirits put her into a kind of black stupor. Everything was uncouth to her: steam heat, electric light, gas-stove, telephone—even the alarm clock in her bedroom. Not knowing how to turn off her radiator, and having the simple person's distrust of opening windows in a strange place, the first few nights she was sick with heat and suffocation. In her sleep she cried out indistinguishable words about being shot. In spite of Mrs. Leland's patient tuition, she made every possible kind of mistake. The children, with the quickness of youth, realized her inexperience and uncertainty, and played a thousand impish pranks. Mrs. Leland could see that the girl had been through distresses at home, and kept the evening papers, with their headlines about Ireland, out of sight. But one evening, in the kitchen, Judy came upon a Sunday rotogravure section with pictures of burnt streets in Cork. The look of the people in those photographs went through her heart. The men wearing caps, the women in shawls, something even in the shape of trouser legs and heavy shoes, reminded Judy how far she was from all that she understood. It's the little things you take for granted at home that come back to hurt you when you're away. That night, sitting in her bedroom next the nursery, she shook herself ill with sobs.
One who might have helped her greatly took pains to add to her bewilderment. Hattie, Mrs. Leland's coloured cook, a retainer of long standing, was sharply disgruntled at this new addition to the household. Jealousy was the root of Hattie's irritation, and it shot up a rapid foliage of poison ivy. The previous nurse, a bosom friend of Hattie's own race, had been discharged in December for incompetence. Moreover, Hattie had not forgotten poor naïve Judy's startled look when they first encountered. Judy had hardly seen a coloured person before, and was honestly alarmed. Hattie, though loyal to Mrs. Leland in her own primitive fashion, deeply resented this interloper. The invasion proved that Mrs. Leland was no longer entirely dependent on the particular clique of Heathwood coloured society in which Hattie moved. The cook's logic was narrow but rigorous. The sooner the intruder could be discouraged out of the house, the sooner the Black Hussars (as Heathwood ladies called the coloured colony on whom they largely relied for assistance) would resume undivided sway. Mrs. Leland had had a Polish girl as a stop-gap for a few days after the coloured nurse left; and observing the cook's demeanour toward this unfortunate, Mr. Leland had remarked that Hattie was working for a black Christmas.
So Hattie, who was sharp-tongued and very capable, hectored Judy whenever she entered the kitchen, and by all the black arts at her command (which were many) added to the girl's distress. Judy, in spite of her mistress's kindness, grew more and more wretched. As Mr. Leland said in private (pursuing the train of his previous pun), the maids were black and blue. Mrs. Leland, much goaded by domestic management and the care of a very small baby, began to wonder whether she had not added another child to look after rather than lightening her burdens. And then she saw that Judy was on the verge of nervous collapse. She tried to hearten the girl by giving her an extra holiday. Judy was given some money, packed off to the station in a taxi, and sent on her maiden trip to town in the hope that city sights and shop windows would revive her interest in life. Mrs. Flaherty, the lodging-house lady in Brooklyn, was telephoned to, and promised to send her small boy to meet the girl at the station.
It happened to be the eve of the genial Saint Valentine's Day. Shop windows were gay with pleasantly exaggerated symbols of his romantic power. Winter afternoons in the city are cruel to the unfortunate, for the throng of the streets the light and lure of the scene, make loneliness all the worse if there is trouble in your heart.
Judy sat in the waiting room of the Long Island terminal in Brooklyn, and tears were on her face. She had somehow missed Mrs. Flaherty's lad. Then she had tried to find her way to the lodging-house, but grew more and more frightened and bewildered as she strayed. Giving that up, she had gone into a movie, and there, for a while, she had been happy. The favourites of the screen are the true internationalists: they speak a language, crude though it often is, which is known from Brooklyn to Bombay. But then pictures were shown of scenes in Ireland. She came out with cold hands, and wandered vaguely along the streets until dusk. Finally, in despair, she groped back to the station at Flatbush Avenue, and sat forlornly on a bench, too weary and sorry even to ask how to get home.
With the unerring instinct of the stranger for choosing the wrong place, she had blundered into the downstairs station, by the train-gates, missing the waiting room above where departures are duly announced by orotund men in blue and silver. In that chilly cavern she sat, dumbly watching the press of homeward commuters laden with parcels and papers. Red signboards clattered up and down over the iron gates, and she puzzled doubtfully over such names asSpeonk, andFar Rockaway. The last somehow recalled a nursery rhyme and made her feel even more lost and homesick. Occasionally, with a gentle groan and rumble, an electric train slid up to the railing and stared at her with two fierce hostile eyes. The soda fountain in the corner was doing a big business: timidly she went over, feeling cold, and asked for tea. To her amazement, there were no hot drinks to be had. The people, all gulping iced mixtures, stared at her curiously. Sure, this is a mad country, she thought. The clock telling the time was the only thing she could properly understand.
So it was the clock, at last, that brought her to startled action. It was getting late. A tall, good-looking fellow in a blue uniform came out of a room at the back of the station, carrying two lighted lanterns. He halted not far from where she was sitting, and compared his watch with the Western Union clock. Of all the hundreds she had seen, he was the first who looked easily questionable. With a sudden impulse Judy got up, clutching her coin-purse.
“If you please, where will I be after taking the train to Heathwood?” she said, nervously.
“Heathwood? The 6:18 makes Heathwood. Right over there, the gate's just opening. Change at Jamaica.”
He looked down at her, wondering but kindly. He was puzzled at the frightened way she was staring at his coat-collar; he could hardly have guessed that to wet eyes the embroidered letters had at first seemed to beliar. Her puny, pinched face was streaked with tears, the red knitted muffler made her pallor even whiter. The little imitation fur trimmings on her coat sleeves and collar were worn and shabby.
“Thank you,” she said, blindly, and started off for the wrong gate.
“Hey!” he called, and overtook her in a few long strides. “This way, miss. Got your ticket?”
In a sudden panic she opened her purse, and could not find it.
“Oh, surely I've lost it,” she cried. “Where's the booking office?”
“The booking office?” he said. “D'you mean the news-stand? Here you are.” He picked up the ticket, which she had dropped in her nervousness.
“That's all right,” he said, encouragingly. “This train, over here. I'm one of the crew. I'll see you get there. Don't worry.”
He escorted her through the gate, and found her a seat on the train, beside a stout commuter half buried in parcels.
“Now you stay right here,” he said. “I'll tell you when we get to Jamaica, and show you the Heathwood train.” He smiled genially, and left her.
Judy got out her wet handkerchief and wiped her face. As the train ran through the tunnel, she wished she had been on the inside of the seat, for the dark window would have been useful as a mirror. “He saw me crying,” she kept repeating to herself. The man beside her blanketed himself with a newspaper, and the pile of packages on his knees kept sliding over onto her lap, but she was oblivious. She was thinking of the tall man in blue with the queer cap. How kind he had been. The first real kindness she had met in all that nightmare afternoon.
Presently he came through the car. She could see him far down the aisle, leaning courteously over each seat. At first she thought he was just saying a friendly word to all the passengers. Sure, that's like him, she said to herself: he has a grand way with him. Then she saw that he was punching tickets with a silver clipper. Glory, it's the Guard himself, she thought. I wonder will he speak to me again?
The man beside her thrust an arm out from his mass of bundles and held a large oblong of red-striped cardboard across in front of her face. This reminded Judy of her own ticket, which was so different from her neighbour's that she worried for a moment lest it should not be valid. Here was her friend, bending above her with a smile.
“Everything all right?” he said. “The next stop's Jamaica. That's where you get off. Watch for me at this door, and I'll show you the Heath-wood train.” Click, click: the two tickets were punched, and he went on. Judy shut up her coin purse with a snap, and began to notice the hat worn by the lady in the seat in front.
At Jamaica she found him in the vestibule, his head overtopping the pushing crowd. “This way,” he said, and led her quickly across the platform. “Jack,” he said to the brakeman on the other train, “tell this lady when you get to Heathwood.”
“Well, Judy,” said Mrs. Leland when her nursemaid got back to the house. “How much better you look! Did you have a good time?”
“Oh, a grand time,” said Judy. Her face had a touch of colour and indeed even her awkward bog-trotting gait seemed lighter and more sprightly. “That's good,” said her mistress. “You'd better run down and get some supper before Hattie puts everything away. You can put Jack to bed after you've had something to eat.”
“Pretty late for supper,” grumbled Hattie, as Judy came into the kitchen. “Doan' you think I got nothing to do but wait on you?”
“I'll get my own supper,” said Judy, politely. “Don't you bother.”
“You've got a head on your shoulders,” said Hattie, banging some dishes on to the kitchen table. “Whyn't you use it and get back on time?”
“The black banshee's up in arms again,” said Judy to herself. “I'll hold my peace.”
“That's the trouble with foreigners,” growled Hattie. “They ain't got no sense. These Irish micks come over here, puttin' on airs, where nobody wants 'em.”
Judy's sallow cheek began to burn a darker tint.
“Ah, nabocklish!” she said. “There's somebody loves me, at any rate.”
She hurried through supper, and ran upstairs to put Jack to bed. The six-year-old was amusing himself by snapping open and shut something that gleamed in the lamplight.
“Here!” she said. “What are you doing with Judy's purse?”
Jack looked up in surprise. It was the first time that he had heard that note of command in the meek Judy's voice.
“I found it on your bureau,” he said.
“Well, leave it be, darlin'.” She took it from him. “Glory above, what's become of——?”
She fell on her knees on the floor and began searching.
“Ah, here, 'tis!” she cried, gladly. From the rug she picked up a tiny red cardboard heart, and replaced it carefully in one of the sockets of her purse.
“What is it?” said Jack, yawning.
“Sure, it's my Valentine!” said Judy. “It ain't many girls that gets a Valentine from a big handsome man like that the first time he sees them.”
I have often wondered how many of the Long Island trainmen use a heart-shaped punch.