by Unknown
He had intended to do big things with Peaceful Moments. He had meant to start a new epoch in the literature of Manhattan.
“I gottan idea,” he had said to Miss Scobell. “All this yellow journalism—red blood and all that—folks are tired of it. They want something milder. Wholesome, see what I mean? There’s money in it. Guys make a roll too big to lift by selling soft drinks, don’t they? Well, I’m going to run a soft-drink paper. See?”
The enterprise had started well. To begin with, he had found the ideal editor. He had met Mr. Renshaw at a down-East gathering presided over by Mrs. Oakley, and his Napoleonic eye had seen in J. Brabazon the seeds of domestic greatness. Before they parted, he had come to terms with him. Nor had the latter failed to justify his intuition. He made an admirable editor. It was not Mr. Renshaw’s fault that the new paper had failed to electrify America. It was the public on whom the responsibility for the failure must be laid. They spoiled the whole thing. Certain of the faithful subscribed, it is true, and continued to subscribe, but the great heart of the public remained untouched. The great heart of the public declined to be interested in the meditations of Mr. Philpotts and the humor of Mr. B. Henderson Asher, and continued to spend its money along the bad old channels. The thing began to bore Mr. Scobell. He left the conduct of the journal more and more to Mr. Renshaw, until finally—it was just after the idea for extracting gold from sea water had struck him—he put the whole business definitely out of his mind. (His actual words were that he never wanted to see or hear of the darned thing again, inasmuch as it gave him a pain in the neck.) Mr. Renshaw was given a free hand as to the editing, and all matters of finance connected with the enterprise were placed in the hands of Mr. Scobell’s solicitors, who had instructions to sell the journal, if, as its owner crisply put it, they could find any chump who was enough of a darned chump to give real money for it. Up to the present the great army of chumps had fallen short of this ideal standard of darned chumphood.
Ever since this parting of the ways, Mr. Renshaw had been in his element. Under his guidance Peaceful Moments had reached a level of domesticity which made other so-called domestic journals look like sporting supplements. But at last the work had told upon him. Whether it was the effort of digging into the literature of the past every week, or the strain of reading B. Henderson Asher’s “Moments of Mirth” is uncertain. At any rate, his labors had ended in wrecking his health to such an extent that the doctor had ordered him three months’ complete rest, in the woods or mountains, whichever he preferred; and, being a farseeing man, who went to the root of things, had absolutely declined to consent to Mr. Renshaw’s suggestion that he keep in touch with the paper during his vacation. He was adamant. He had seen copies of Peaceful Moments once or twice, and refused to permit a man in Mr. Renshaw’s state of health to come in contact with Luella Granville Waterman’s “Moments in the Nursery” and B. Henderson Asher’s “Moments of Mirth.”
“You must forget that such a paper exists,” he said. “You must dismiss the whole thing from your mind, live in the open, and develop some flesh and muscle.”
Mr. Renshaw had bowed before the sentence, howbeit gloomily, and now, on the morning of Betty’s departure from Mrs. Oakley’s house with the letter of introduction, was giving his final instructions to his temporary successor.
This temporary successor in the editorship was none other than John’s friend, Rupert Smith, late of the News.
Smith, on leaving Harvard, had been attracted by newspaper work, and had found his first billet on a Western journal of the type whose society column consists of such items as “Jim Thompson was to town yesterday with a bunch of other cheap skates. We take this opportunity of once more informing Jim that he is a liar and a skunk,” and whose editor works with a pistol on his desk and another in his hip-pocket. Graduating from this, he had proceeded to a reporter’s post on a daily paper in Kentucky, where there were blood feuds and other Southern devices for preventing life from becoming dull. All this was good, but even while he enjoyed these experiences, New York, the magnet, had been tugging at him, and at last, after two eventful years on the Kentucky paper, he had come East, and eventually won through to the staff of the News.
His presence in the office of Peaceful Moments was due to the uncomfortable habit of most of the New York daily papers of cutting down their staff of reporters during the summer. The dismissed had, to sustain them, the knowledge that they would return, like the swallows, anon, and be received back into their old places; but in the meantime they suffered the inconvenience of having to support themselves as best they could. Smith, when, in the company of half-a-dozen others, he had had to leave the News, had heard of the vacant post of assistant editor on Peaceful Moments, and had applied for and received it. Whereby he was more fortunate than some of his late colleagues; though, as the character of his new work unrolled itself before him, he was frequently doubtful on that point. For the atmosphere of Peaceful Moments, however wholesome, was certainly not exciting, and his happened to be essentially a nature that needed the stimulus of excitement. Even in Park Row, the denizens of which street are rarely slaves to the conventional and safe, he had a well-established reputation in this matter. Others of his acquaintances welcomed excitement when it came to them in the course of the day’s work, but it was Smith’s practise to go in search of it. He was a young man of spirit and resource.
His appearance, to those who did not know him, hardly suggested this. He was very tall and thin, with a dark, solemn face. He was a purist in the matter of clothes, and even in times of storm and stress presented an immaculate appearance to the world. In his left eye, attached to a cord, he wore a monocle.
Through this, at the present moment, he was gazing benevolently at Mr. Renshaw, as the latter fussed about the office in the throes of departure. To the editor’s rapid fire of advice and warning he listened with the pleased and indulgent air of a father whose infant son frisks before him. Mr. Renshaw interested him. To Smith’s mind Mr. Renshaw, put him in any show you pleased, would alone have been worth the price of admission.
“Well,” chirruped the holiday-maker—he was a little man with a long neck, and he always chirruped—”Well, I think that is all, Mr. Smith. Oh, ah, yes! The stenographer. You will need a new stenographer.”
The Peaceful Moments stenographer had resigned her position three days before, in order to get married.
“Unquestionably, Comrade Renshaw,” said Smith. “A blonde.”
Mr. Renshaw looked annoyed.
“I have told you before, Mr. Smith, I object to your addressing me as Comrade. It is not—it is not—er—fitting.”
Smith waved a deprecating hand.
“Say no more,” he said. “I will correct the habit. I have been studying the principles of Socialism somewhat deeply of late, and I came to the conclusion that I must join the cause. It looked good to me. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start in by swiping all you can and sitting on it. A noble scheme. Me for it. But I am interrupting you.”
Mr. Renshaw had to pause for a moment to reorganize his ideas.
“I think—ah, yes. I think it would be best perhaps to wait for a day or two in case Mrs. Oakley should recommend someone. I mentioned the vacancy in the office to her, and she said she would give the matter her attention. I should prefer, if possible, to give the place to her nominee. She—”
“—has eighteen million a year,” said Smith. “I understand. Scatter seeds of kindness.”
Mr. Renshaw looked at him sharply. Smith’s face was solemn and thoughtful.
“Nothing of the kind,” the editor said, after a pause. “I should prefer Mrs. Oakley’s nominee because Mrs. Oakley is a shrewd, practical woman who—er—who—who, in fact—”
“Just so,” said Smith, eying him gravely through the monocle. “Entirely.”
The scrutiny irritated Mr. Renshaw.
“Do put that thing away, Mr. Smith,” he said.
“That thing?”
“Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away.”
“Instantly,” said Smith, replacing the monocle in his vest-pocket. “You object to it? Well, well, many people do. We all have these curious likes and dislikes. It is these clashings of personal taste which constitute what we call life. Yes. You were saying?”
Mr. Renshaw wrinkled his forehead.
“I have forgotten what I intended to say,” he said querulously. “You have driven it out of my head.”
Smith clicked his tongue sympathetically. Mr. Renshaw looked at his watch.
“Dear me,” he said, “I must be going. I shall miss my train. But I think I have covered the ground quite thoroughly. You understand everything?”
“Absolutely,” said Smith. “I look on myself as some engineer controlling a machine with a light hand on the throttle. Or like some faithful hound whose master—”
“Ah! There is just one thing. Mrs. Julia Burdett Parslow is a little inclined to be unpunctual with her ‘Moments with Budding Girlhood.’ If this should happen while I am away, just write her a letter, quite a pleasant letter, you understand, pointing out the necessity of being in good time. She must realize that we are a machine.”
“Exactly,” murmured Smith.
“The machinery of the paper cannot run smoothly unless contributors are in good time with their copy.”
“Precisely,” said Smith. “They are the janitors of the literary world. Let them turn off the steam heat, and where are we? If Mrs. Julia Burdett Parslow is not up to time with the hot air, how shall our ‘Girlhood’ escape being nipped in the bud?”
“And there is just one other thing. I wish you would correct a slight tendency I have noticed lately in Mr. Asher to be just a trifle—well, not precisely risky, but perhaps a shade broad in his humor.”
“Young blood!” sighed Smith. “Young blood!”
“Mr. Asher is a very sensible man, and he will understand. Well, that is all, I think. Now, I really must be going. Good-by, Mr. Smith.”
“Good-by.”
At the door Mr. Renshaw paused with the air of an exile bidding farewell to his native land, sighed and trotted out.
Smith put his feet upon the table, flicked a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve, and resumed his task of reading the proofs of Luella Granville Waterman’s “Moments in the Nursery.”
He had not been working long, when Pugsy Maloney, the office boy, entered.
“Say!” said Pugsy.
“Say on, Comrade Maloney.”
“Dere’s a loidy out dere wit a letter for Mr. Renshaw.”
“Have you acquainted her with the fact that Mr. Renshaw has passed to other climes?”
“Huh?”
“Have you, in the course of your conversation with this lady, mentioned that Mr. Renshaw has beaten it?”
“Sure, I did. And she says can she see you?”
Smith removed his feet from the table.
“Certainly,” he said. “Who am I that I should deny people these little treats? Ask her to come in, Comrade Maloney.”
CHAPTER XIII
BETTY MAKES A FRIEND
Betty had appealed to Master Maloney’s esthetic sense of beauty directly she appeared before him. It was with regret, therefore, rather than with the usual calm triumph of the office boy, that he informed her that the editor was not in. Also, seeing that she was evidently perturbed by the information, he had gone out of his way to suggest that she lay her business, whatever it might be, before Mr. Renshaw’s temporary successor.
Smith received her with Old-World courtesy.
“Will you sit down?” he said. “Not to wait for Comrade Renshaw, of course. He will not be back for another three months. Perhaps I can help you. I am acting editor. The work is not light,” he added gratuitously. “Sometimes the cry goes round New York, ‘Can Smith get through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?’ But I stagger on. I do not repine. What was it that you wished to see Comrade Renshaw about?”
He swung his monocle lightly by its cord. For the first time since she had entered the office Betty was rather glad that Mr. Renshaw was away. Conscious of her defects as a stenographer she had been looking forward somewhat apprehensively to the interview with her prospective employer. But this long, solemn youth put her at her ease. His manner suggested in some indefinable way that the whole thing was a sort of round game.
“I came about the typewriting,” she said.
Smith looked at her with interest.
“Are you the nominee?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you come from Mrs. Oakley?”
“Yes.”
“Then all is well. The decks have been cleared against your coming. Consider yourself engaged as our official typist. By the way, can you type?”
Betty laughed. This was certainly not the awkward interview she had been picturing in her mind.
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”
“Never mind,” said Smith. “I’m not very good at editing. Yet here I am. I foresee that we shall make an ideal team. Together, we will toil early and late till we whoop up this domestic journal into a shining model of what a domestic journal should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. Excursion trains will be run from the Middle West to see this domestic journal. Visitors from Oshkosh will do it before going on to Grant’s tomb. What exactly is your name?”
Betty hesitated. Yes, perhaps it would be better. “Brown,” she said.
“Mine is Smith. The smiling child in the outer office is Pugsy Maloney, one of our most prominent citizens. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but one of us. You will get to like Comrade Maloney. And now, to touch on a painful subject—work. Would you care to start in now, or have you any other engagements? Perhaps you wish to see the sights of this beautiful little city before beginning? You would prefer to start in now? Excellent. You could not have come at a more suitable time, for I was on the very point of sallying out to purchase about twenty-five cents’ worth of lunch. We editors, Comrade Brown, find that our tissues need constant restoration, such is the strenuous nature of our duties. You will find one or two letters on that table. Good-by, then, for the present.”
He picked up his hat, smoothed it carefully and with a courtly inclination of his head, left the room.
Betty sat down, and began to think. So she was really earning her own living! It was a stimulating thought. She felt a little bewildered. She had imagined something so different. Mrs. Oakley had certainly said that Peaceful Moments was a small paper, but despite that, her imagination had conjured up visions of bustle and activity, and a peremptory, overdriven editor, snapping out words of command. Smith, with his careful speech and general air of calm detachment from the noisy side of life, created an atmosphere of restfulness. If this was a sample of life in the office, she thought, the paper had been well named. She felt soothed and almost happy.
Interesting and exciting things, New York things, began to happen at once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen, with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied, bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur to him.
“Say!” said Pugsy.
Betty was fond of cats.
“Oh, don’t hurt her!” she cried anxiously.
Master Maloney eyed the cat as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“I wasn’t hoitin’ her,” he said, without emotion. “Dere was two fresh kids in the street sickin’ a dawg on to her. And I comes up and says, ‘G’wan! What do youse t’ink youse doin’, fussin’ de poor dumb animal?’ An’ one of de guys, he says, ‘G’wan! Who do youse t’ink youse is?’ An’ I says, ‘I’m de guy what’s goin’ to swat youse on de coco, smarty, if youse don’t quit fussin’ de poor dumb animal.’ So wit’ dat he makes a break at swattin�
�� me one, but I swats him one, an’ I swats de odder feller one, an’ den I swats dem bote some more, an’ I gits de kitty, an’ I brings her in here, cos I t’inks maybe youse’ll look after her. I can’t be boddered myself. Cats is foolishness.”
And, having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.
“How splendid of you, Pugsy!” cried Betty. “She might have been killed, poor thing.”
“She had it pretty fierce,” admitted Master Maloney, gazing dispassionately at the rescued animal, which had escaped from his clutch and taken up a strong position on an upper shelf of the bookcase.
“Will you go out and get her some milk, Pugsy? She’s probably starving. Here’s a quarter. Will you keep the change?”
“Sure thing,” assented Master Maloney.
He strolled slowly out, while Betty, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap her fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente cordiale with the cat.
By the time Pugsy returned, carrying a five-cent bottle of milk, the animal had vacated the shelf, and was sitting on the table, polishing her face. The milk having been poured into the lid of a tobacco tin, in lieu of a saucer, she suspended her operations and adjourned for refreshments, Pugsy, having no immediate duties on hand, concentrated himself on the cat.
“Say!” he said.
“Well?”
“Dat kitty. Pipe de leather collar she’s wearin’.”
Betty had noticed earlier in the proceedings that a narrow leather collar encircled the animal’s neck.
“Guess I know where dat kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I guess she’s one of Bat Jarvis’s kitties. He’s got twenty-t’ree of dem, and dey all has dose collars.”
“Bat Jarvis?”
“Sure.”
“Who is he?”
Pugsy looked at her incredulously.
“Say! Ain’t youse never heard of Bat Jarvis? He’s—he’s Bat Jarvis.”
“Do you know him?”