“Buddy,” said the editor, “whose is the Ames story?”
This being an official query, Buddy made pretense of consulting his marked file. “Higman, sir.”
“Oh! You wrote it! Did you have a letter?”
“Yes, sir. But I didn’t write it from that. I wouldn’t make a story out of a letter from Her. That’s personal,” said Buddy, proud in his rigid sense of ethics.
“Then where did you get it?”
“I figured that like as not Miss Pritchard would get one by the same mail. So I went an’ ast her.”
“And she had?”
“Yes, sir. I told her I was there for The Guardian an’ was there anything she could give out. An’ she gimme the story.”
“Buddy, if you don’t look out you’re going to be a real newspaper man one of these days!”
“I wisht I was one now,” returned the boy wistfully.
“Do you? What would you do?”
“I dunno, exactly. Somethin’.”
“You’d need a more definite policy than that, son, if you were in the bad fix of owning a newspaper.”
“I’d do somethin’,” persisted the boy. “I’d soak the Germans. Say, Boss, how old do you have to be to get into the National Guard?”
“A good deal older than you are. Why all this martial ardor, Buddy?”
“That’s what She’d do, if She was a man.”
“Did the letter say so?”
“Yes. Can a feller—is it ever all right for a feller to show a lady’s letter?”
Wondering again as he had wondered before whence this freckled scrub of a boy had derived his instincts of the gentleman born and bred, Jeremy answered gravely: “It might be. That’s for you to decide, Buddy.”
“I kinda guess She’d like for you to see this.” He dug out of his pocket a crumpled sheet, covered with the strong, straight, beautiful script of Marcia. “Read there, Boss.” He indicated an inner page.
“. . . or later it must come,” the letter ran. “As soon as you are old enough you must learn to be a soldier. Everyone in the world who can, must learn to be a soldier. I cannot tell you, Buddy, of the terrible thing that German national ambition is; how it reaches out into every nation to make that nation its tool; how it aims to overrun the world and make it one vast Germany. You will be old enough to see what it is doing in your own little city, so far away. Perhaps you do not comprehend. Perhaps you will not understand even what I am writing; but you may find someone on your paper who will know and will explain.”
“I think, perhaps, I was meant to see this, Buddy,” interjected Jeremy.
“But I guess I know what She was drivin’ at all right,” replied the boy.
“How can America be so blind!” Jeremy read on. “How can its newspapers be so blind! The last numbers of The Guardian I saw, no word of arousing the people to a sense of what all this means. Oh, Buddy, Buddy! If you were only a man and had a newspaper of your own! I have written your aunt about the books and . . .”
The bottom of the page terminated the reading. Jeremy, with his lips set straight and hard, handed back the sheet. The boy faced him with a candid eye.
“Boss, you’re a man,” he said.
“Am I?” said Jeremy, more to himself than in reply.
“And you got a noospaper of your own.”
“Not of my own, wholly.”
“Ain’t it?” cried Buddy, amazed. “Who’s in on it?”
“The people who read it, and believe in it. It’s partly theirs. The men I work with to help keep politics straight and fair. I have to think of them.”
Buddy sighed. “It ain’t as big a cinch as it looks, ownin’ a paper, it is!”
“Not these days, son.”
“Anyway, I guess She knows,” asseverated the stout little loyalist. “She’s lived there an’ she oughta know. What She says goes, with me.”
The clear single-mindedness of a boy! How the editor of The Guardian, feeling a thousand years old, envied the lowliest assistant! How the unstilled ache for Marcia woke and throbbed again at her words! She had begged him not wholly to forget her. Had it been a spell laid upon him it could have been no more compelling. He wondered whether, twenty years hence, her influence would have become less vital, less intimate upon him, and, wondering, knew that it would not.
He went home deviously by way of Montgomery Street.
The early shoots had lanced their way into the sunshine of the Pritchard garden, and Miss Letitia was making her rounds, inspecting for the winter-killed amongst the tenderer of her shrubbery. Jeremy leaned upon the fence saying nothing. There were reasons why he felt hesitant about approaching Miss Pritchard. In his campaign against the tax-dodgers he had fallen foul of old Madam Taylor, one of her particular friends.
Shortly after the publication, Miss Pritchard, meeting Jeremy at her own front gate as he was about to enter, had presented the danger signal of two high-colored spots upon the cheek-curves, and a pair of specially bright eyes; also the theorem, for his acceptance, that a newspaper ought to be in better business than attacking and abusing lone defenseless women. Declining to accept this theorem without debate, Jeremy was informed that Miss Pritchard would disdain henceforth to harbor The Guardian upon her premises. Interpreting this to mean that the editor of that fallen sheet would be equally unwelcome, the caller had departed, divided between wrath and melancholy. Up to that time the Pritchard house had been one of the few ports of call in his busy but rather lonely life. Now, another of those gossamer links with Marcia Ames was severed. Miss Pritchard soon came to regret her severity, too; for the steadfast, unspoken, hopeless devotion of the boy—he was still only that to her—to the memory of her golden girl, had bloomed for her like one of the flowers in her old maid’s garden.
Now, seeing the lover, forlorn and mute, outside what was once his paradise, she gave way to compunction. But not wholly. There was a sting in her first words.
“Are you reckoning up taxes on my place, Mr. Jeremy?”
“That’s been done long ago,” he said uncompromisingly.
“When are you going to print it?”
“As soon as you try to dodge ’em.”
He looked very tired, and his voice had lost something of the buoyant quality of youth which she had always associated with him. A different note crept into her own voice when she spoke again.
“I had a long letter from Marcia today.”
“Is she well?” The tone was politely formal, but she saw the color rise in his face and marked the pathetic eagerness in his eyes.
“She’s the same Marcia Ames. Even to the name.”
He caught at the opportunity. “She’s not married yet?”
“No. Her fiancé is fighting. Somewhere in the remote colonies, I believe.”
“Fiancé?”
“Surely you knew that she was engaged; a young cousin of her stepfather’s. It was an affair of years.”
“Not when she was here,” Jeremy blurted.
Her surprised regard challenged him. “You seem very certain,” she observed.
Jeremy recovered himself. “I had heard rumors, but nothing formal,” he said. “I thought perhaps you would have told me when it was announced.”
“I assumed that you knew.”
What Miss Pritchard meant was, “I assumed that she would have told you.” She perceived that there were depths in this affair of which she knew little or nothing.
“German betrothals are curious and formal things in her class,” continued the old maid. “When she came here to ‘see America first,’ I believe it was understood that nothing was to be settled until her return. She went back, and the formalities were arranged. At the outbreak of war her fiancé was somewhere in Africa and, I believe, is still there.”
“I see,” said Jeremy dully.
“Marcia still sees The Guardian.” The spirit of romance in the spinster heart would force the words.
“I know. And that helps. Good-bye and thank you.”
&nb
sp; “Come to see me and let’s be friends again,” said the warm-hearted lady.
Most of that night Jeremy spent on the tramp, thinking of The Guardian in terms of Marcia’s letter; haggardly struggling to harmonize cross-interests, cross-purposes, cross-loyalties. Out of the struggle emerged one clear resolve. What next the progress of the war should produce that intimately touched his conscience, should be the signal, the release. Upon that The Guardian should speak its owner’s mind though damnation follow.
Three weeks later the Lusitania2 was sunk.
24
Like a portent of stern events to come, The Guardian’s Lusitania editorial laid hold on the collective mind of Fenchester. It was a hand set against every man’s breast, bidding him to stop as he went about his occupations, and summon his own soul to ponder what a German war might mean. “The Black Flag,” Jeremy had captioned it. Simple and grim words were its medium, and the burden of its charge was plain murder.
The first effect was that of any profound and pervasive shock; the community lay quiet, collecting and rallying its forces. Until now, no newspaper in the State of Centralia had dared lift voice against the cumulative outrages of the conquerors, fearful as all were of the coördinated forces of German sentiment, ready and under arms for the call. To what the initial outbreak might spread, no man could foretell. It was not so much a high explosive as a fire-bomb that The Guardian had cast.
The German press ravened. The dailies howled for the blood of the dastardly and treacherous Robson. They called upon the authorities to suppress The Guardian, without troubling to specify upon what ground. They summoned the Governor to cut loose from a supporter so violent, so vicious, so filled with the spirit of hatred and contention. The German religious press backed up the attack, and even improved upon it. It declared The Guardian and its owner enemies to an all-wise, all-beneficent, and all-German Gott, and shrieked inquisitorially for a holy ban upon it. All of which, combined, failed to keep Jeremy awake o’ nights. Indeed, it had quite the reverse effect. For the first time in months he fell asleep at peace with his own soul, and awoke with untainted, new-found courage to face whatever the day might bring.
One day brought Cassius Kimball, of The Bellair Journal. He was a slow, cautious, weary, high-minded, and plucky man of forty-five who looked sixty behind his lines and his glasses, and he eyed Jeremy, his devoted admirer, with a benign but puzzled expression as he sat in the office spare chair.
“I wish I’d said it first,” was his opening remark.
“I wish you had,” returned Jeremy, quite honestly.
“I never say anything first. That’s why I’m really not much good.”
Jeremy laughed. From the most independent and battle-scarred veteran of Middle Western journalism, this was funny.
“It’s a fact, though,” continued the tired voice. “I always think too slow. What are you going to do next?”
“Next?”
“About the Lusitania issue. You’ve started it in Centralia. Nothing can put out that fire. It may die down and only smolder. But the embers will be there. And nobody can tell when they’ll reach a powder magazine. Have you seen the recent Eastern papers?”
“Some of them.”
“A lot of them are yelling for war. It’s going to be put up to the President pretty stiff. What are you going to do about that?”
The gravity of the tone, almost amounting to deference, made Jeremy tingle. Here was the greatest journalistic power in Centralia, a man whose clarity and courage of spirit had won for him an almost hierarchic ascendency in his profession, ascribing such importance to the course of The Guardian that he had taken the four-hour journey from Bellair to consult its owner. To do Jeremy justice, his pride was for the paper, semi-impersonal, rather than for himself. To the question he had no ready answer.
“I hadn’t thought it out yet. What’s your idea?”
Kimball took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. His eyes, without them, seemed squinted and anxious. He drummed on the desk a moment before replying.
“There’s a man down in Washington,” he said in his gentle, reasonable voice, “with a hard job on his hands. He has a lot of decisions to make every day. We newspaper men have the same kind of decisions, but where ours affect a few thousands, his affect a hundred millions. From now on he’s going to have bigger decisions put up to him. He can lift his hand and there’ll be war tomorrow, and six months from tomorrow there’ll be thousands of us back home here in mourning. It’s a hard decision, Mr. Robson. You and I did our best to beat the President for election.1 We’ve differed from him in many things. But this isn’t politics. It’s something else now. And, knowing what he’s got to face, I don’t feel exactly like yelling in the President’s ears.” He resumed his glasses. “Seen the Governor since your editorial?”
“No. He’s up at his home in Spencerville.”
“It’s going to be put up to him pretty hard, too. Your outbreak is responsible.”
“How?”
“The German legislative outfit in Bellair,” said Kimball, who had an uncanny knack of knowing things before they were ready to be known, “is cooking up a bill to offset your editorial. They intend to put the State on record. The bill will call on the President and Congress to declare that any American sailing on a ship of a belligerent nation forfeits all right to the protection2 of his own country.”
“What will The Journal do about that?”
“Fight it.”
“Can we beat it?”
“No. But the Governor can.”
“Will he?”
“Ah! What do you think? You’re closer to him than anyone else.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not on the war. I don’t even know what he’s thinking, most of the time. Your paper has more influence with him than The Guardian. If I could think of Martin Embree as being afraid of anybody, I’d say he was a little afraid of The Journal.”
“Of course, he doesn’t want to lose us,” answered Kimball reflectively. “He can’t afford to lose us. But there isn’t much danger of that.” He rose. “I’ll send you a word before the bill is ready. They intend to spring it suddenly.”
Jeremy thanked him, and after he had left, sat down to think out the Governor’s situation. He could appreciate its perplexities. He could foresee that Embree would blame him for stirring up dissension unnecessarily, when he might have held his peace. Therefore he was prepared for a difficult interview when, on the Governor’s return, he was invited to lunch with him. But “Smiling Mart’s” smile was as open and friendly as ever.
“You dipped your pen in earthquake and eclipse that time, my boy,” he observed.
“I had to speak out or blow up, Martin.”
“Therefore you did both. Up in the Northern Tier you’re not precisely popular.”
“No. The circulation reports show that. We’re getting two or three dozen stop-the-paper orders from there per day.”
“I’ve done my best for you, there. But I can’t hold the more rabid elements. There’s one saving grace, though.”
“That’s—?”
“You’ve gone no further than criticism. You didn’t even hint at war.”
“And I’m not going to. Not on this issue.”
Martin Embree drew a long, slow, luxurious breath. “Thank God for that! At least they can’t identify us with the war-howlers in the East.”
Jeremy passed the “us.” “What’s your view of the Lusitania sinking, Martin?”
“It’s damnable. But it’s war.”
“German war. They’re holding jollifications over it here. There’s to be one tonight at the Deutscher Club.”
“Not a formal thing?” cried the Governor.
“Bausch and Henry Vogt, the florist, are engineering it, I understand. It isn’t exactly a club affair.”
“Ah! That’s not so bad. You’re not going to print anything about it?”
“I’d print their remarks about The Guardian if I could get ’em,” grinned Jeremy. �
��They’d be spicy. But of course they won’t admit reporters.”
“What goes on at a private dinner is nobody’s business,” said the relieved official. “So you don’t need to stir up any more trouble for yourself on that score. Some of the smaller German organizations have been passing resolutions about The Guardian. That will cut into your circulation, won’t it?”
“To some extent. But we’re holding up.”
“Just keep your head, Jem, and we’ll be all right,” advised the Governor anxiously. “Don’t forget we’ve got measures to put through here at home more important than a war four thousand miles away. Harvey Rappelje, of the Economics Department of the University, is working on the Corporation Control Bill now. I’m going to have him talk it over with you when it’s ready.”
“Glad to see him. Speaking of bills, Martin, what do you know of a bill drawn by a bunch of Bellair Germans, to keep Americans off British passenger ships?”
“Nothing. And I don’t want to until I have to.”
“That’ll be soon,” prophesied Jeremy. “I’m going to fight that.”
“I don’t know about that,” doubted the other. “There are two sides to all these questions, remember.”
“There are two sides to the war. Admitted. But there’s only one side to Americanism. And this is a question of American rights.”
“But is it quite fair to our Cause, to endanger it now for an issue that you aren’t called upon to report?”
“If our cause isn’t American, then The Guardian is going to quit it,” retorted Jeremy heatedly. “What’s more, Martin, if I ever had to suspect that when the issue comes you wouldn’t be for America against—”
“Stop right there!” the other adjured him, laughing. “When you hear me speak an un-American word or see me do an un-American act, it will be time enough to worry. But in the business now on hand we need those German votes, and I’ll do just as much to hold them as you can do to drive them away.”
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