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A Modern Instance

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"I wonder the old Bartlett pear didn't burst into a palm-tree over your
heads," said Olive. Mrs. Halleck looked grieved at her levity, and Olive
hastened to add: "Don't take it to heart, mother! I understood just what
you meant, and I can imagine just how shocking Mrs. Hubbard's heathen
remarks must have been. We should all be shocked if we knew how many people
there were like her, and we should all try to deny it, and so would they. I
guess Christianity is about as uncommon as civilization,--and that's _very_
uncommon. If her poor, feeble mind was such a chaos, what do you suppose
her husband's is?"

This would certainly not have been easy for Mrs. Halleck to say then, or
to say afterward, when Bartley walked up to the font in her church, with
Marcia at his side, and Flavia in his arms, and a faintly ironical smile on
his face, as if he had never expected to be got in for this, but was going
to see it through now. He had, in fact, said, "Well, let's go the whole
figure," when Marcia had expressed a preference for having the rite
performed in church, instead of in their own house.

He was unquestionably growing stout, and even Mrs. Halleck noticed that
his blonde face was unpleasantly red that day. He was, of course, not
intemperate. He always had beer with his lunch, which he had begun to take
down town since the warm weather had come on and made the walk up the hill
to Clover Street irksome: and he drank beer at his dinner,--he liked a late
dinner, and they dined at six, now,--because it washed away the fatigues
of the day, and freshened you up. He was rather particular about his beer,
which he had sent in by the gross,--it came cheaper that way; after trying
both the Cincinnati and the Milwaukee lagers, and making a cursory test
of the Boston brand, he had settled down upon the American tivoli; it
was cheap, and you could drink a couple of bottles without feeling it.
Freshened up by his two bottles, he was apt to spend the evening in an
amiable drowse and get early to bed, when he did not go out on newspaper
duty. He joked about the three fingers of fat on his ribs, and frankly
guessed it was the beer that did it; at such times he said that perhaps he
should have to cut down on his tivoli.

Marcia and he had not so much time together as they used to have; she was a
great deal taken up with the baby, and he found it dull at home, not doing
anything or saying anything; and when he did not feel sleepy, he sometimes
invented work that took him out at night. But he always came upstairs after
putting his hat on, and asked Marcia if he could help her about anything.

He usually met other newspaper men on these excursions, and talked
newspaper with them, airing his favorite theories. He liked to wander
about with reporters who were working up cases; to look in at the police
stations, and go to the fires; and he was often able to give the Events men
points that had escaped the other reporters. If asked to drink, he always
said, "Thanks, no; I don't do anything in that way. But if you'll make it
beer, I don't mind." He took nothing but beer when he hurried out of the
theatre into one of the neighboring resorts, just as the great platters of
stewed kidneys and lyonnaise potatoes came steaming up out of the kitchen,
prompt to the drop of the curtain on the last act. Here; sometimes, he met
a friend, and shared with him his dish of kidneys and his schooner of beer;
and he once suffered himself to be lured by the click of the balls into the
back room. He believed that he played a very good game of billiards; but he
was badly beaten that night. He came home at daylight, fifty dollars out.
But he had lost like a gentleman in a game with gentlemen; and he never
played again.

By day he worked hard, and since his expenses had been increased by
Flavia's coming, he had undertaken more work for more pay. He still
performed all the routine labor of a managing editor, and he now wrote the
literary notices of the Events, and sometimes, especially if there was
anything new, the dramatic criticisms; he brought to the latter task all
the freshness of a man who, till the year before, had not been half a dozen
times inside a theatre.

He attributed the fat on his ribs to the tivoli; perhaps it was also owing
in some degree to a good conscience, which is a much easier thing to keep
than people imagine. At any rate, he now led a tranquil, industrious, and
regular life, and a life which suited him so well that he was reluctant to
interrupt it by the visit to Equity, which he and Marcia had talked of in
the early spring. He put it off from time to time, and one day when she was
pressing him to fix some date for it he said, "Why can't you go, Marcia?"

"Alone?" she faltered.

"Well, no; take the baby, of course. And I'll run down for a day or two
when I get a chance."

Marcia seemed in these days to be schooling herself against the impulses
that once brought on her quarrels with Bartley. "A day or two--" she began,
and then stopped and added gravely, "I thought you said you were going to
have several weeks' vacation."

"Oh, don't tell me what I _said_!" cried Bartley. "That was before I
undertook this extra work, or before I knew what a grind it was going to
be. Equity is a good deal of a dose for me, any way. It's all well enough
for you, and I guess the change from Boston will do you good, and do the
baby good, but _I_ shouldn't look forward to three weeks in Equity with
unmitigated hilarity."

"I know it will be stupid for you. But you need the rest. And the Hallecks
are going to be at North Conway, and they said they would come over," urged
Marcia. "I know we should have a good time."

Bartley grinned. "Is that your idea of a good time, Marsh? Three weeks of
Equity, relieved by a visit from such heavy weights as Ben Halleck and his
sisters? Not any in mine, thank you."

"How can you--how _dare_ you speak of them so!" cried Marcia lightening
upon him. "Such good friends of yours--such good people--" Her voice shook
with indignation and wounded feeling.

Bartley rose and took a turn about the room, pulling down his waistcoat and
contemplating its outward slope with a smile. "Oh, I've got more friends
than I can shake a stick at. And with pleasure at the helm, goodness is
a drug in the market,--if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor. Look here,
Marcia," he added, severely. "If you like the Hallecks, all well and good;
I sha'n't interfere with you; but they bore me. I outgrew Ben Halleck years
ago. He's duller than death. As for the old people, there's no harm in
them,--though _they're_ bores, too,--nor in the old girls; but Olive
Halleck doesn't treat me decently. I suppose that just suits you: I've
noticed that you never like the women that _do_ treat me decently."

"They don't treat _me_ decently!" retorted Marcia.

"Oh, Miss Kingsbury treated you very well that night. She couldn't imagine
your being jealous of her politeness to me."

Marcia's temper fired at his treacherous recurrence to a grievance which he
had once so sacredly and sweetly ignored. "If you wish to take up bygones,
why don't you go back to Hannah Morrison at once? She treated you even
better than Miss Kingsbury."

"I should have been very willing to do that," said Bartley, "but I thought
it might remind you of a disagreeable little episode in your own life, when
you flung me away, and had to go down on your knees to pick me up again."

These thrusts which they dealt each other in their quarrels, however blind
and misdirected, always reached their hearts: it was the wicked will that
hurt, rather than the words. Marcia rose, bleeding inwardly, and her
husband felt the remorse of a man who gets the best of it in such an
encounter.

"Oh, I'm sorry I said that, Marcia! I didn't mean it; indeed I--" She
disdained to heed him, as she swept out of the room, and up the stairs; and
his anger flamed out again.

"I give you fair warning," he called after her, "not to try that trick of
locking the door, or I will smash it in."

Her answer was to turn the key in the door with a click which he could not
fail to hear.

The peace in which they had been living of late was very comfortable to
Bartley; he liked it; he hated to have it broken; he was willing to do what
he could to restore it at once. If he had no better motive than this, he
still had this motive; and he choked down his wrath, and followed Marcia
softly upstairs. He intended to reason with her, and he began, "I say,
Marsh," as he turned the door-knob. But you cannot reason through a
keyhole, and before he knew he found himself saying, "Will you open this?"
in a tone whose quiet was deadly. She did not answer; he heard her stop
in her movements about the room, and wait, as if she expected him to ask
again. He hesitated a moment whether to keep his threat of breaking the
door in; but he turned away and went down stairs, and so into the street.
Once outside, he experienced the sense of release that comes to a man from
the violation of his better impulses; but he did not know what to do or
where to go. He walked rapidly away; but Marcia's eyes and voice seemed to
follow him, and plead with him for his forbearance. But he answered his
conscience, as if it had been some such presence, that he had forborne too
much already, and that now he should not humble himself; that he was right
and should stand upon his right. There was not much comfort in it, and he
had to brace himself again and again with vindictive resolution.




XXIV.


Bartley walked about the streets for a long time, without purpose or
direction, brooding fiercely on his wrongs, and reminding himself how
Marcia had determined to have him, and had indeed flung herself upon his
mercy, with all sorts of good promises; and had then at once taken the
whip-hand, and goaded and tormented him ever since. All the kindness of
their common life counted for nothing in this furious reverie, or rather it
was never once thought of; he cursed himself for a fool that he had ever
asked her to marry him, and for doubly a fool that he had married her when
she had as good as asked him. He was glad, now, that he had taunted her
with that; he only regretted that he had told her he was sorry. He was
presently aware of being so tired that he could scarcely pull one leg after
another; and yet he felt hopelessly wide awake. It was in simple despair of
anything else to do that he climbed the stairs to Ricker's lofty perch
in the Chronicle-Abstract office. Ricker turned about as he entered, and
stared up at him from beneath the green pasteboard visor with which he was
shielding his eyes from the gas; his hair, which was of the harshness and
color of hay, was stiffly poked up and strewn about on his skull, as if it
were some foreign product.

"Hello!" he said. "Going to issue a morning edition of the Events?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Oh, I supposed you evening-paper gents went to bed with the hens. What
has kept you up, esteemed contemporary?" He went on working over some
despatches which lay upon his table.

"Don't you want to come out and have some oysters?" asked Bartley.

"Why this princely hospitality? I'll come with you in half a minute,"
Ricker said, going to the slide that carried up the copy to the
composing-room and thrusting his manuscript into the box.

"Where are you going?" he asked, when they found themselves out in the
soft starlit autumnal air; and Bartley answered with the name of an
oyster-house, obscure, but of singular excellence.

"Yes, that's the best place," Ricker commented. "What I always wonder at in
you is the rapidity with which you Ve taken on the city. You were quite
in the green wood when you came here, and now you know your Boston like a
little man. I suppose it's your newspaper work that's familiarized you with
the place. Well, how do you like your friend Witherby, as far as you've
gone?"

"Oh, we shall get along, I guess," said Bartley. "He still keeps me in the
background, and plays at being editor, but he pays me pretty well."

"Not too well, I hope."

"I should like to see him try it."

"I shouldn't," said Ricker. "He'd expect certain things of you, if he did.
You'll have to look out for Witherby."

"You mean that he's a scamp?"

"No; there isn't a better conscience than Witherby carries in the whole
city. He's perfectly honest. He not only believes that he has a right to
run the Events in his way; but he sincerely believes that he is right in
doing it. There's where he has the advantage of you, if you doubt him. I
don't suppose he ever did a wrong thing in his life; he'd persuade himself
that the thing was right before he did it."

"That's a common phenomenon, isn't it?" sneered Bartley. "Nobody sins."

"You're right, partly. But some of us sinners have our misgivings, and
Witherby never has. You know he offered me your place?"

"No, I didn't," said Bartley, astonished and not pleased.

"I thought he might have told you. He made me inducements; but I was afraid
of him: Witherby is the counting-room incarnate. I talked you into him
for some place or other; but he didn't seem to wake up to the value of my
advice at once. Then I couldn't tell what he was going to offer you."

"Thank you for letting me in for a thing you were afraid of!"

"I didn't believe he would get you under his thumb, as he would me. You've
got more back-bone than I have. I have to keep out of temptation; you have
noticed that I never drink, and I would rather not look upon Witherby when
he is red and giveth his color in the cup. I'm sorry if I've let you in for
anything that you regret. But Witherby's sincerity makes him dangerous,--I
own that."

"I think he has some very good ideas about newspapers," said Bartley,
rather sulkily.

"Oh, very," assented Ricker. "Some of the very best going. He believes
that the press is a great moral engine, and that it ought to be run in the
interest of the engineer."

"And I suppose you believe that it ought to be run in the interest of the
public?"

"Exactly--after the public has paid."

"Well, I don't; and I never did. A newspaper is a private enterprise."

"It's private property, but it isn't a private enterprise, and in its very
nature it can't be. You know I never talk 'journalism' and stuff; it amuses
me to hear the young fellows at it, though I think they might be doing
something worse than magnifying their office; they might be decrying it.
But I've got a few ideas and principles of my own in my back pantaloons
pocket."

"Haul them out," said Bartley.

"I don't know that they're very well formulated," returned Ricker, "and I
don't contend that they're very new. But I consider a newspaper a public
enterprise, with certain distinct duties to the public. It's sacredly bound
not to do anything to deprave or debauch its readers; and it's sacredly
bound not to mislead or betray them, not merely as to questions of morals
and politics, but as to questions of what we may lump as 'advertising.' Has
friend Witherby developed his great ideas of advertisers' rights to you?"
Bartley did not answer, and Ricker went on: "Well, then, you can understand
my position, when I say it's exactly the contrary."

"You ought to be on a religious newspaper, Ricker," said Bartley with a
scornful laugh.

"Thank you, a secular paper is bad enough for me."

"Well, I don't pretend that I make the Events just what I want," said
Bartley. "At present, the most I can do is to indulge in a few cheap dreams
of what I should do, if I had a paper of my own."

"What are your dreams? Haul out, as you say."

"I should make it pay, to begin with; and I should make it pay by making
it such a thorough newspaper that every class of people _must_ have it. I
should cater to the lowest class first, and as long as I was poor I would
have the fullest and best reports of every local accident and crime; that
would take all the rabble. Then, as I could afford it, I'd rise a little,
and give first-class non-partisan reports of local political affairs; that
would fetch the next largest class, the ward politicians of all parties.
I'd lay for the local religious world, after that;--religion comes right
after politics in the popular mind, and it interests the women like murder:
I'd give the minutest religious intelligence, and not only that, but the
religious gossip, and the religious scandal. Then I'd go in for fashion and
society,--that comes next. I'd have the most reliable and thorough-going
financial reports that money could buy. When I'd got my local ground
perfectly covered, I'd begin to ramify. Every fellow that could spell, in
any part of the country, should understand that, if he sent me an account
of a suicide, or an elopement, or a murder, or an accident, he should
be well paid for it; and I'd rise on the same scale through all the
departments. I'd add art criticisms, dramatic and sporting news, and book
reviews, more for the looks of the thing than for anything else; they don't
any of 'em appeal to a large class. I'd get my paper into such a shape
that people of every kind and degree would have to say, no matter what
particular objection was made to it, 'Yes, that's so; but it's the best
_news_paper in the world, _and we can't get along without it.'"_

"And then," said Ricker, "you'd begin to clean up, little by little,--let
up on your murders and scandals, and purge and live cleanly like a
gentleman? The trick's been tried before."

They had arrived at the oyster-house, and were sitting at their table,
waiting for the oysters to be brought to them. Bartley tilted his chair
back. "I don't know about the cleaning up. I should want to keep all my
audience. If I cleaned up, the dirty fellows would go off to some one else;
and the fellows that pretended to be clean would be disappointed."

"Why don't you get Witherby to put your ideas in force?" asked Ricker,
dryly.

Bartley dropped his chair to all fours, and said with a smile, "He belongs
to church."

"Ah! he has his limitations. What a pity! He has the money to establish
this great moral engine of yours, and you haven't. It's a loss to
civilization."

"One thing, I know," said Bartley, with a certain effect of virtue, "nobody
should buy or sell me; and the advertising element shouldn't spread beyond
the advertising page."

"Isn't that rather high ground?" inquired Ricker.

Bartley did not think it worth while to answer. "I don't believe that a
newspaper is obliged to be superior in tone to the community," he said.

"I quite agree with you."

"And if the community is full of vice and crime, the newspaper can't do
better than reflect its condition."

"Ah! there I should distinguish, esteemed contemporary. There are several
tones in every community, and it will keep any newspaper scratching to rise
above the highest. But if it keeps out of the mud at all, it can't help
rising above the lowest. And no community is full of vice and crime any
more than it is full of virtue and good works. Why not let your model
newspaper mirror these?"

"They're not snappy."

"No, that's true."

"You must give the people what they want."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well, it's a beautiful dream," said Ricker, "nourished on a youth sublime.
Why do not these lofty imaginings visit us later in life? You make me quite
ashamed of my own ideal newspaper. Before you began to talk, I had been
fancying that the vice of our journalism was its intense localism. I have
doubted a good while whether a drunken Irishman who breaks his wife's head,
or a child who falls into a tub of hot water, has really established a
claim on the public interest. Why should I be told by telegraph how three
negroes died on the gallows in North Carolina? Why should an accurate
correspondent inform me of the elopement of a married man with his
maid-servant in East Machias? Why should I sup on all the horrors of a
railroad accident, and have the bleeding fragments hashed up for me at
breakfast? Why should my newspaper give a succession of shocks to my
nervous system, as I pass from column to column, and poultice me between
shocks with the nastiness of a distant or local scandal? You reply, because
I like spice. But I don't. I am sick of spice; and I believe that most of
our readers are."

"Cater to them with milk-toast, then," said Bartley.

Ricker laughed with him, and they fell to upon their oysters.

When they parted, Bartley still found himself wakeful. He knew that he
should not sleep if he went home, and he said to himself that he could not
walk about all night. He turned into a gayly-lighted basement, and asked
for something in the way of a nightcap.

The bar-keeper said there was nothing like a hot-scotch to make you sleep;
and a small man with his hat on, who had been talking with the bar-keeper,
and coming up to the counter occasionally to eat a bit of cracker or a bit
of cheese out of the two bowls full of such fragments that stood at the end
of the counter, said that this was so.

It was very cheerful in the bar-room, with the light glittering on the rows
of decanters behind the bar-keeper, a large, stout, clean, pale man in his
shirt-sleeves, after the manner of his kind; and Bartley made up his mind
to stay there till he was drowsy, and to drink as many hot-scotches as were
necessary to the result. He had his drink put on a little table and sat
down to it easily, stirring it to cool it a little, and feeling its
flattery in his brain from the first sip.

The man who was munching cheese and crackers wore a hat rather large for
him, pulled down over his eyes. He now said that he did not care if he took
a gin-sling, and the bar-keeper promptly set it before him on the counter,
and saluted with "Good evening, Colonel," a large man who came in, carrying
a small dog in his arms. Bartley recognized him as the manager of a variety
combination playing at one of the theatres, and the manager recognized the
little man with the gin-sling as Tommy. He did not return the bar-keeper's
salutation, but he asked, as he sat down at a table, "What do I want for
supper, Charley?"

The bar-keeper said, oracularly, as he leaned forward to wipe his counter
with a napkin, "Fricassee chicken."

"Fricassee devil," returned the manager. "Get me a Welsh rabbit."

The bar-keeper, unperturbed by this rejection, called into the tube behind
him, "One Welsh rabbit."

"I want some cold chicken for my dog," said the manager.

"One cold chicken," repeated the bar-keeper, in his tube.

"White meat," said the manager.

"White meat," repeated the bar-keeper.

"I went into the Parker House one night about midnight, and I saw four
doctors there eating lobster salad, and devilled crab, and washing it down
with champagne; and I made up my mind that the doctors needn't talk to me
any more about what was wholesome. I was going in for what was _good_. And
there aint anything better for supper than Welsh rabbit in _this_ world."

As the manager addressed this philosophy to the company at large, no one
commented upon it, which seemed quite the same to the manager, who hitched
one elbow over the back of his chair, and caressed with the other hand the
dog lying in his lap.

The little man in the large hat continued to walk up and down, leaving his
gin-sling on the counter, and drinking it between his visits to the cracker
and cheese.

"What's that new piece of yours, Colonel?" he asked, after a while. "I aint
seen it yet."

"Legs, principally," sighed the manager. "That's what the public wants. I
give the public what it wants. I don't pretend to be any better than the
public. Nor any worse," he added, stroking his dog.

These ideas struck Bartley in their accordance with his own ideas of
journalism, as he had propounded them to Ricker. He had drunk half of his
hot-scotch.

"That's what I say," assented the little man. "All that a theatre has got
to do is to keep even with the public."

"That's so, Tommy," said the manager of a school of morals, with wisdom
that impressed more and more the manager of a great moral engine.

"The same principle runs through everything," observed Bartley, speaking
for the first time.

The drink had stiffened his tongue somewhat, but it did not incommode his
utterance; it rather gave dignity to it, and his head was singularly clear.
He lifted his empty glass from the table, and, catching the bar-keeper's
eye, said, "Do it again." The man brought it back full.

"It runs through the churches as well as the theatres. As long as the
public wanted hell-fire, the ministers gave them hell-fire. But you
couldn't get hell-fire--not the pure, old-fashioned brimstone article--out
of a popular preacher now, for love or money."

The little man said, "I guess you've got about the size of it there"; and
the manager laughed.

"It's just so with the newspapers, too," said Bartley. "Some newspapers
used to stand out against publishing murders, and personal gossip, and
divorce trials. There ain't a newspaper that pretends to keep anyways up
with the times, now, that don't do it! The public want spice, and they will
have it!"

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