The first long envelope he opened was from a woman. There was a neat little manuscript accompanied by a letter which explained that the writer was a widow who was trying to make her living by her pen and who, further, hoped that the generosity of the editor of the Eclipse would lead him to give her article the opportunity which she was sure it deserved. She hoped that the editor would pay her as well as possible for it, as she needed the money greatly. She added that her brother was a reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel and he had declared that her literary style was excellent.
Baker really did not read this note. His vast experience of a fortnight had enabled him to detect its kind in two glances. He unfolded the manuscript, looked at it woodenly and then tossed it with the letter to the top of his desk, where it lay with the other corpses. None could think of widows in Arkansas, ambitious from the praise of the reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel, waiting for a crown of literary glory and money. In the next envelope a man using the note-paper of a Boston journal begged to know if the accompanying article would be acceptable; if not it was to be kindly returned in the enclosed stamped envelope. It was a humourous essay on trolley cars. Adventuring through the odd scraps that were come to the great mill, Baker paused occasionally to relight his pipe.
As he went through envelope after envelope, the desks about him gradually were occupied by young men who entered from the hall with their faces still red from the cold of the streets. For the most part they bore the unmistakable stamp of the American college. They had that confident poise which is easily brought from the athletic field. Moreover, their clothes were quite in the way of being of the newest fashion. There was an air of precision about their cravats and linen. But on the other hand there might be with them some indifferent westerner who was obliged to resort to irregular means and harangue startled shop-keepers in order to provide himself with collars of a strange kind. He was usually very quick and brave of eye and noted for his inability to perceive a distinction between his own habit and the habit of others, his western character preserving itself inviolate amid a confusion of manners.
The men, coming one and one, or two and two, flung badinage to all corners of the room. Afterward, as they wheeled from time to time in their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other with the utmost good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and riddling personalities with the quaint and cynical humour of a newspaper office. Throughout this banter, it was strange to note how infrequently the men smiled, particularly when directly engaged in an encounter.
A wide door opened into another apartment where were many little slanted tables, each under an electric globe with a green shade. Here a curly-headed scoundrel with a corncob pipe was hurling paper balls the size of apples at the head of an industrious man who, under these difficulties, was trying to draw a picture of an awful wreck with ghastly-faced sailors frozen in the rigging. Near this pair a lady was challenging a German artist who resembled Napoleon III. with having been publicly drunk at a music hall on the previous night. Next to the great gloomy corridor of this sixteenth floor was a little office presided over by an austere boy, and here waited in enforced patience a little dismal band of people who wanted to see the Sunday editor.
Baker took a manuscript and after glancing about the room, walked over to a man at another desk, “Here is something that I think might do,” he said.
The man at the desk read the first two pages. “But where is the photograph?” he asked then. “There should be a photograph with this thing.”
“Oh, I forgot,” said Baker. He brought from his desk a photograph of the babe that had been born lacking arms and one eye. Baker’s superior braced a knee against his desk and settled back to a judicial attitude. He took the photograph and looked at it impassively. “Yes,” he said, after a time, “that’s a pretty good thing. You better show that to Coleman when he comes in.”
In the little office where the dismal band waited, there had been a sharp hopeful stir when Rufus Coleman, the Sunday editor, passed rapidly from door to door and vanished within the holy precincts. It had evidently been in the minds of some to accost him then, but his eyes did not turn once in their direction. It was as if he had not seen them. Many experiences had taught him that the proper manner of passing through this office was at a blind gallop.
The dismal band turned then upon the austere office boy. Some demanded with terrible dignity that he should take in their cards at once. Others sought to ingratiate themselves by smiles of tender friendliness. He for his part employed what we would have called his knowledge of men and women upon the group, and in consequence blundered and bungled vividly, freezing with a glance an annoyed and importunate Arctic explorer who was come to talk of illustrations for an article that had been lavishly paid for in advance. The hero might have thought he was again in the northern seas. At the next moment the boy was treating almost courteously a German from the east side who wanted the Eclipse to print a grand full page advertising description of his invention, a gun which was supposed to have a range of forty miles and to be able to penetrate anything with equanimity and joy. The gun, as a matter of fact, had once been induced to go off when it had hurled itself passionately upon its back, incidentally breaking its inventor’s leg. The projectile had wandered some four hundred yards seaward, where it dug a hole in the water which was really a menace to navigation. Since then there had been nothing tangible save the inventor, in splints and out of splints, as the fortunes of science decreed. In short, this office boy mixed his business in the perfect manner of an underdone lad dealing with matters too large for him, and throughout he displayed the pride and assurance of a god.
As Coleman crossed the large office his face still wore the stern expression which he invariably used to carry him unmolested through the ranks of the dismal band. As he was removing his London overcoat he addressed the imperturbable back of one of his staff, who had a desk against the opposite wall. “Has Hasskins sent in that drawing of the mine accident yet?” The man did not lift his head from his work, but he answered at once: “No; not yet.” Coleman was laying his hat on a chair. “Well, why hasn’t he?” he demanded. He glanced toward the door of the room in which the curly-headed scoundrel with the corncob pipe was still hurling paper balls at the man who was trying to invent the postures of dead mariners frozen in the rigging. The office boy came timidly from his post and informed Coleman of the waiting people. “All right,” said the editor. He dropped into his chair and began to finger his letters, which had been neatly opened and placed in a little stack by a boy. Baker came in with the photograph of the miserable babe.
It was publicly believed that the Sunday staff of the Eclipse must have a kind of aesthetic delight in pictures of this kind, but Coleman’s face betrayed no emotion as he looked at this specimen. He lit a fresh cigar, tilted his chair and surveyed it with a cold and stony stare. “Yes, that’s all right,” he said slowly. There seemed to be no affectionate relation between him and this picture. Evidently he was weighing its value as a morsel to be flung to a ravenous public, whose wolf-like appetite could only satisfy itself upon mental entrails, abominations. As for himself, he seemed to be remote, exterior. It was a matter of the Eclipse business.
Suddenly Coleman became executive. “Better give it to Schooner and tell him to make a half-page — or, no, send him in here and I’ll tell him my idea. How’s the article? Any good? Well, give it to Smith to rewrite.”
An artist came from the other room and presented for inspection his drawing of the seamen dead in the Egging of the wreck, a company of grizzly and horrible figures, bony-fingered, shrunken and with awful eyes. “Hum,” said Coleman, after a prolonged study, “that’s all right. That’s good, Jimmie. But you’d better work ’em up around the eyes a little more.” The office boy was deploying in the distance, waiting for the correct moment to present some cards and names.
The artist was cheerfully taking away his corpses when Coleman hailed him. “Oh, Jim, let me see that thing again, will you? Now, how ab
out this spar? This don’t look right to me.”
“It looks right to me,” replied the artist, sulkily.
“But, see. It’s going to take up half a page. Can’t you change it somehow?”
“How am I going to change it?” said the other, glowering at Coleman. “That’s the way it ought to be. How am I going to change it? That’s the way it ought to be.”
“No, it isn’t at all,” said Coleman. “You’ve got a spar sticking out of the main body of the drawing in a way that will spoil the look of the whole page.”
The artist was a man of remarkable popular reputation and he was very stubborn and conceited of it, constantly making himself unbearable with covert threats that if he was not delicately placated at all points, he would freight his genius over to the office of the great opposition journal.
“That’s the way it ought to be,” he repeated, in a tone at once sullen and superior. “The spar is all right. I can’t rig spars on ships just to suit you.”
“And I can’t give up the whole paper to your accursed spars, either,” said Coleman, with animation. “Don’t you see you use about a third of a page with this spar sticking off into space? Now, you were always so clever, Jimmie, in adapting yourself to the page. Can’t you shorten it, or cut it off, or something? Or, break it — that’s the thing. Make it a broken spar dangling down. See?”
“Yes, I s’pose I could do that,” said the artist, mollified by a thought of the ease with which he could make the change, and mollified, too, by the brazen tribute to a part of his cleverness.
“Well, do it, then,” said the Sunday editor, turning abruptly away. The artist, with head high, walked majestically back to the other room. Whereat the curly-headed one immediately resumed the rain of paper balls upon him. The office boy came timidly to Coleman and suggested the presence of the people in the outer office. “Let them wait until I read my mail,” said Coleman. He shuffled the pack of letters indifferently through his hands. Suddenly he came upon a little grey envelope. He opened it at once and scanned its contents with the speed of his craft. Afterward he laid it down before him on the desk and surveyed it with a cool and musing smile. “So?” he remarked. “That’s the case, is it?”
He presently swung around in his chair, and for a time held the entire attention of the men at the various desks. He outlined to them again their various parts in the composition of the next great Sunday edition. In a few brisk sentences he set a complex machine in proper motion. His men no longer thrilled with admiration at the precision with which he grasped each obligation of the campaign toward a successful edition. They had grown to accept it as they accepted his hat or his London clothes. At this time his face was lit with something of the self-contained enthusiasm of a general. Immediately afterward he arose and reached for his coat and hat.
The office boy, coming circuitously forward, presented him with some cards and also with a scrap of paper upon which was scrawled a long and semi-coherent word. “What are these?” grumbled Coleman.
“They are waiting outside,” answered the boy, with trepidation. It was part of the law that the lion of the ante-room should cringe like a cold monkey, more or less, as soon as he was out of his private jungle. “Oh, Tallerman,” cried the Sunday editor, “here’s this Arctic man come to arrange about his illustration. I wish you’d go and talk it over with him.” By chance he picked up the scrap of paper with its cryptic word. “Oh,” he said, scowling at the office boy. “Pity you can’t remember that fellow. If you can’t remember faces any better than that you should be a detective. Get out now and tell him to go to the devil.” The wilted slave turned at once, but Coleman hailed him. “Hold on. Come to think of it, I will see this idiot. Send him in,” he commanded, grimly.
Coleman lapsed into a dream over the sheet of grey note paper. Presently, a middle-aged man, a palpable German, came hesitatingly into the room and bunted among the desks as unmanageably as a tempest-tossed scow. Finally he was impatiently towed in the right direction. He came and stood at Coleman’s elbow and waited nervously for the engrossed man to raise his eyes. It was plain that this interview meant important things to him. Somehow on his commonplace countenance was to be found the expression of a dreamer, a fashioner of great and absurd projects, a fine, tender fool. He cast hopeful and reverent glances at the man who was deeply contemplative of the grey note. He evidently believed himself on the threshold of a triumph of some kind, and he awaited his fruition with a joy that was only made sharper by the usual human suspicion of coming events.
Coleman glanced up at last and saw his visitor. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he remarked icily, bending upon the German the stare of a tyrant. “So you’ve come again, have you?” He wheeled in his chair until he could fully display a contemptuous, merciless smile. “Now, Mr. What’s-your-name, you’ve called here to see me about twenty times already and at last I am going to say something definite about your invention.” His listener’s face, which had worn for a moment a look of fright and bewilderment, gladdened swiftly to a gratitude that seemed the edge of an outburst of tears. “Yes,” continued Coleman, “I am going to say something definite. I am going to say that it is the most imbecile bit of nonsense that has come within the range of my large newspaper experience. It is simply the aberration of a rather remarkable lunatic. It is no good; it is not worth the price of a cheese sandwich. I understand that its one feat has been to break your leg; if it ever goes off again, persuade it to break your neck. And now I want you to take this nursery rhyme of yours and get out. And don’t ever come here again. Do you understand? You understand, do you?” He arose and bowed in courteous dismissal.
The German was regarding him with the surprise and horror of a youth shot mortally. He could not find his tongue for a moment. Ultimately he gasped: “But, Mister Editor” — Coleman interrupted him tigerishly. “You heard what I said? Get out.” The man bowed his head and went slowly toward the door.
Coleman placed the little grey note in his breast pocket. He took his hat and top coat, and evading the dismal band by a shameless manoeuvre, passed through the halls to the entrance to the elevator shaft. He heard a movement behind him and saw that the German was also waiting for the elevator.
Standing in the gloom of the corridor, Coleman felt the mournful owlish eyes of the German resting upon him. He took a case from his pocket and elaborately lit a cigarette. Suddenly there was a flash of light and a cage of bronze, gilt and steel dropped, magically from above. Coleman yelled: “Down!” A door flew open. Coleman, followed by the German, stepped upon the elevator. “Well, Johnnie,” he said cheerfully to the lad who operated this machine, “is business good?”
“Yes, sir, pretty good,” answered the boy, grinning. The little cage sank swiftly; floor after floor seemed to be rising with marvellous speed; the whole building was winging straight into the sky. There were soaring lights, figures and the opalescent glow of ground glass doors marked with black inscriptions. Other lifts were springing heavenward. All the lofty corridors rang with cries. “Up!”
“Down!”
“Down!”
“Up!” The boy’s hand grasped a lever and his machine obeyed his lightest movement with sometimes an unbalancing swiftness.
Coleman discoursed briskly to the youthful attendant. Once he turned and regarded with a quick stare of insolent annoyance the despairing countenance of the German whose eyes had never left him. When the elevator arrived at the ground floor, Coleman departed with the outraged air of a man who for a time had been compelled to occupy a cell in company with a harmless spectre.
He walked quickly away. Opposite a corner of the City Hall he was impelled to look behind him. Through the hordes of people with cable cars marching like panoplied elephants, he was able to distinguish the German, motionless and gazing after him. Coleman laughed. “That’s a comic old boy,” he said, to himself.
In the grill-room of a Broadway hotel he was obliged to wait some minutes for the fulfillment of his orders and he spent the time
in reading and studying the little grey note. When his luncheon was served he ate with an expression of morose dignity.
CHAPTER IV.
MARJORY paused again at her father’s door. After hesitating in the original way she entered the library. Her father almost represented an emblematic figure, seated upon a column of books. “Well,” he cried. Then, seeing it was Marjory, he changed his tone. “Ah, under the circumstances, my dear, I admit your privilege of interrupting me at any hour of the day. You have important business with me.” His manner was satanically indulgent.
The girl fingered a book. She turned the leaves in absolute semblance of a person reading. “Rufus Coleman called.”
“Indeed,” said the professor.
“And I’ve come to you, father, before seeing him.” The professor was silent for a time. “Well, Marjory,” he said at last, “what do you want me to say?” He spoke very deliberately. “I am sure this is a singular situation. Here appears the man I formally forbid you to marry. I am sure I do not know what I am to say.”
“I wish to see him,” said the girl.
“You wish to see him?” enquired the professor. “You wish to see him? Marjory, I may as well tell you now that with all the books and plays I’ve read, I really don’t know how the obdurate father should conduct himself. He is always pictured as an exceedingly dense gentleman with white whiskers, who does all the unintelligent things in the plot. You and I are going to play no drama, are we, Marjory? I admit that I have white whiskers, and I am an obdurate father. I am, as you well may say, a very obdurate father. You are not to marry Rufus Coleman. You understand the rest of the matter. He is here; you want to see him. What will you say to him when you see him?”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 41
