With this manifestation of impersonal calmness, she turned again to the window; but her mother protested. “Do quit watching those foolish boys; you mustn’t let them upset you so by their playing.”
Florence moaned. “They don’t ‘upset’ me, mamma! They have no effects on me by the slightest degree! And I told you, mamma, they’re not ‘playing’.”
“Then what are they doing?”
“Well, they’re having a newspaper. They got the printing-press and an office in Herbert’s stable, and everything. They got somebody to give ’em some ole banisters and a railing from a house that was torn down somewheres, and then they got it stuck up in the stable loft, so it runs across with a kind of a gate in the middle of these banisters, and on one side is the printing-press and a desk from that nasty little Henry Rooter’s mother’s attic; and a table and some chairs, and a map on the wall; and that’s their newspaper office. They go out and look for what’s the news, and write it down in lead pencil; and then they go up to their office and write it in ink; and then they print it for their newspaper.”
“But what do they do on the fence?”
“That’s where they go to watch what the news is,” Florence explained morosely. “They think they’re so grand, sittin’ up there, pokin’ around! They go other places, too; and they ask people. That’s all they said I could be!” Here the lady’s bitterness became strongly intensified. “They said maybe I could be one o’ the ones they asked if I knew anything, sometimes, if they happened to think of it! I just respectf’ly told ’em I’d decline to wipe my oldest shoes on ’em to save their lives!”
Mrs. Atwater sighed. “You mustn’t use such expressions, Florence.”
“I don’t see why not,” the daughter promptly objected. “They’re a lot more refined than the expressions they used on me!”
“Then I’m very glad you didn’t play with them.”
But at this, Florence once more gave way to filial despair. “Mamma, you just can’t see through anything! I’ve said anyhow fifty times they ain’t — aren’t — playing! They’re getting up a real newspaper, and have people buy it and everything. They been all over this part of town and got every aunt and uncle they have besides their own fathers and mothers, and some people in the neighbourhood, and Kitty Silver and two or three other coloured people besides. They’re going to charge twenty-five cents a year, collect-in-advance because they want the money first; and even papa gave ’em a quarter last night; he told me so.”
“How often do they intend to publish their paper, Florence?” Mrs. Atwater inquired absently, having resumed her sewing.
“Every week; and they’re goin’ to have the first one a week from to-day.”
“What do they call it?”
“The North End Daily Oriole. It’s the silliest name I ever heard for a newspaper; and I told ’em so. I told ’em what I thought of it, I guess!”
“Was that the reason?” Mrs. Atwater asked.
“Was it what reason, mamma?”
“Was it the reason they wouldn’t let you be a reporter with them?”
“Poot!” Florence exclaimed airily. “I didn’t want anything to do with their ole paper. But anyway I didn’t make fun o’ their callin’ it ‘The North End Daily Oriole’ till after they said I couldn’t be in it. Then I did, you bet!”
“Florence, don’t say — —”
“Mamma, I got to say somep’n! Well, I told ’em I wouldn’t be in their ole paper if they begged me on their bented knees; and I said if they begged me a thousand years I wouldn’t be in any paper with such a crazy name and I wouldn’t tell ’em any news if I knew the President of the United States had the scarlet fever! I just politely informed ’em they could say what they liked, if they was dying I declined so much as wipe the oldest shoes I got on ’em!”
“But why wouldn’t they let you be on the paper?” her mother insisted.
Upon this Florence became analytical. “Just so’s they could act so important.” And she added, as a consequence, “They ought to be arrested!”
Mrs. Atwater murmured absently, but forbore to press her inquiry; and Florence was silent, in a brooding mood. The journalists upon the fence had disappeared from view, during her conversation with her mother; and presently she sighed, and quietly left the room. She went to her own apartment, where, at a small and rather battered little white desk, after a period of earnest reverie, she took up a pen, wet the point in purple ink, and without great effort or any critical delayings, produced a poem.
It was in a sense an original poem, though like the greater number of all literary projections, it was so strongly inspirational that the source of its inspiration might easily become manifest to a cold-blooded reader. Nevertheless, to the poetess herself, as she explained later in good faith, the words just seemed to come to her; — doubtless with either genius or some form of miracle implied; for sources of inspiration are seldom recognized by inspired writers themselves. She had not long ago been party to a musical Sunday afternoon at her Great-Uncle Joseph’s house, where Mr. Clairdyce sang some of his songs again and again, and her poem may have begun to coagulate within her then.
THE ORGANEST
By FLORENCE ATWATER
The organest was seated at his organ in a church,
In some beautiful woods of maple and birch,
He was very weary while he played upon the keys,
But he was a great organest and always played with ease,
When the soul is weary,
And the wind is dreary,
I would like to be an organest seated all day at the organ,
Whether my name might be Fairchild or Morgan,
I would play music like a vast amen,
The way it sounds in a church of men.
Florence read her poem seven or eight times, the deepening pleasure of her expression being evidence that repetition failed to denature this work, but on the contrary, enhanced an appreciative surprise at its singular merit. Finally she folded the sheet of paper with a delicate carefulness unusual to her, and placed it in her skirt pocket; then she went downstairs and out into the back yard. Her next action was straightforward and anything but prudish; she climbed the high wooden fences, one after the other, until she came to a pause at the top of that whereon the two journalists had lately made themselves so odiously impressive.
Before her, if she had but taken note of them, were a lesson in history and the markings of a profound transition in human evolution. Beside the old frame stable was a little brick garage, obviously put to the daily use intended by its designer. Quite as obviously the stable was obsolete; anybody would have known from its outside that there was no horse within it. There, visible, was the end of the pastoral age.
All this was lost upon Florence. She sat upon the fence, her gaze unfavourably though wistfully fixed upon a sign of no special aesthetic merit above the stable door.
THE NORTH END DAILY ORIOLE
ATWATER & ROOTER OWNERS &
PROPREITORS SUBSCRIBE NOW 25 CENTS
The inconsistency of the word “daily” did not trouble Florence; moreover, she had found no fault with “Oriole” until the Owners & Propreitors had explained to her in the plainest terms known to their vocabularies that she was excluded from the enterprise. Then, indeed, she had been reciprocally explicit in regard not only to them and certain personal characteristics of theirs, which she pointed out as fundamental, but in regard to any newspaper which should deliberately call itself an “Oriole.” The partners remained superior in manner, though unable to conceal a natural resentment; they had adopted “Oriole” not out of a sentiment for the city of Baltimore, nor, indeed, on account of any ornithologic interest of theirs, but as a relic left over from an abandoned club or secret society, which they had previously contemplated forming, its members to be called “The Orioles” for no reason whatever. The two friends had talked of this plan at many meetings throughout the summer, and when Mr. Joseph Atwater made his great-nephew the unexpected pres
ent of a printing-press, and a newspaper consequently took the place of the club, Herbert and Henry still entertained an affection for their former scheme and decided to perpetuate the name. They were the more sensitive to attack upon it by an ignorant outsider and girl like Florence, and her chance of ingratiating herself with them, if that could be now her intention, was not a promising one.
She descended from the fence with pronounced inelegance, and, approaching the old double doors of the “carriage-house,” which were open, paused to listen. Sounds from above assured her that the editors were editing — or at least that they could be found at their place of business. Therefore, she ascended the cobwebby stairway, emerged from it into the former hay loft, and thus made her appearance in the printing-room of The North End Daily Oriole.
Herbert, frowning with the burden of composition, sat at a table beyond the official railing, and his partner was engaged at the press, earnestly setting type. This latter person (whom Florence so seldom named otherwise than as “that nasty little Henry Rooter”) was of a pure, smooth, fair-haired appearance, and strangely clean for his age and occupation. His profile was of a symmetry he had not yet himself begun to appreciate; his dress was scrupulous and modish; and though he was short, nothing outward about him confirmed the more sinister of Florence’s two adjectives. Nevertheless, her poor opinion of him was plain in her expression as she made her present intrusion upon his working hours. He seemed to reciprocate.
“Listen! Didn’t I and Herbert tell you to keep out o’ here?” he said. “Look at her, Herbert! She’s back again!”
“You get out o’ here, Florence,” said Herbert, abandoning his task with a look of pain. “How often we got to tell you we don’t want you around here when we’re in our office like this?”
“For Heaven’s sake!” Henry Rooter thought fit to add. “Can’t you quit runnin’ up and down our office stairs once in a while, long enough for us to get our newspaper work done? Can’t you give us a little peace?”
The pinkiness of Florence’s altering complexion was justified; she had not been within a thousand miles of their old office for four days. With some heat she stated this to be the fact, adding, “And I only came then because I knew somebody ought to see that this stable isn’t ruined. It’s my own uncle and aunt’s stable, I guess, isn’t it? Answer me that, if you’ll kindly please to do so!”
“It’s my father and mother’s stable,” Herbert asserted. “Haven’t I got a right to say who’s allowed in my own father and mother’s stable?”
“You have not,” the prompt Florence replied. “It’s my own uncle and aunt’s stable, and I got as much right here as anybody.”
“You have not!” Henry Rooter protested hotly. “This isn’t either your ole aunt and uncle’s stable.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, it is not! This isn’t anybody’s stable. It’s my and Herbert’s Newspaper Building, and I guess you haven’t got the face to stand there and claim you got a right to go in a Newspaper Building and say you got a right there when everybody tells you to stay outside of it, I guess!”
“Oh, haven’t I?”
“No, you ‘haven’t — I’!” Mr. Rooter maintained bitterly. “You just walk down town and go in any Newspaper Buildings down there and tell ’em you got a right to stay there all day long when they tell you to get out o’ there! Just try it! That’s all I ask!”
Florence uttered a cry of derision. “And pray, whoever told you I was bound to do everything you ask me to, Mister Henry Rooter?” And she concluded by reverting to that hostile impulse, so ancient, which, in despair of touching an antagonist effectively, reflects upon his ancestors. “If you got anything you want to ask, you go ask your grandmother!”
“Here!” Herbert sprang to his feet. “You try and behave like a lady!”
“Who’ll make me?” she inquired.
“You got to behave like a lady as long as you’re in our Newspaper Building, anyway,” Herbert said ominously. “If you expect to come up here after you been told five dozen times to keep out — —”
“For Heaven’s sakes!” his partner interposed. “When we goin’ to get our newspaper work done? She’s your cousin; I should think you could get her out!”
“Well, I’m goin’ to, ain’t I?” Herbert protested plaintively. “I expect to get her out, don’t I?”
“Oh, do you?” Miss Atwater inquired, with severe mockery. “Pray, how would you expect to accomplish it, pray?”
Herbert looked desperate, but was unable to form a reply consistent with a few new rules of etiquette and gallantry that he had begun to observe during the past year or so. “Now, see here, Florence,” he said. “You’re old enough to know when people tell you to keep out of a place, why, it means they want you to stay away from there.”
Florence remained cold to this reasoning. “Oh, Poot!” she said.
“Now, look here!” her cousin remonstrated, and went on with his argument. “We got our newspaper work to do, and you ought to have sense enough to know newspaper work like this newspaper work we got on our hands here isn’t — well, it ain’t any child’s play.”
His partner appeared to approve of the expression, for he nodded severely and then used it himself. “No, you bet it isn’t any child’s play!” he said.
“No, sir,” Herbert continued. “This newspaper work we got on our hands here isn’t any child’s play.”
“No, sir,” Henry Rooter again agreed. “Newspaper work like this isn’t any child’s play at all!”
“It isn’t any child’s play, Florence,” said Herbert. “It ain’t any child’s play at all, Florence. If it was just child’s play or something like that, why, it wouldn’t matter so much your always pokin’ up here, and — —”
“Well,” his partner interrupted judicially;— “we wouldn’t want her around, even if it was child’s play.”
“No, we wouldn’t; that’s so,” Herbert agreed. “We wouldn’t want you around, anyhow, Florence.” Here his tone became more plaintive. “So, for mercy’s sakes can’t you go on home and give us a little rest? What you want, anyhow?”
“Well, I guess it’s about time you was askin’ me that,” she said, not unreasonably. “If you’d asked me that in the first place, instead of actin’ like you’d never been taught anything, and was only fit to associate with hoodlums, perhaps my time is of some value, myself!”
Here the lack of rhetorical cohesion was largely counteracted by the strong expressiveness of her tone and manner, which made clear her position as a person of worth, dealing with the lowest of her inferiors. She went on, not pausing:
“I thought being as I was related to you, and all the family and everybody else is goin’ to haf to read your ole newspaper, anyway it’d be a good thing if what was printed in it wasn’t all a disgrace to the family, because the name of our family’s got mixed up with this newspaper; — so here!”
Thus speaking, she took the poem from her pocket and with dignity held it forth to her cousin.
“What’s that?” Herbert inquired, not moving a hand. He was but an amateur, yet already enough of an editor to be suspicious.
“It’s a poem,” Florence said. “I don’t know whether I exackly ought to have it in your ole newspaper or not, but on account of the family’s sake I guess I better. Here, take it.”
Herbert at once withdrew a few steps, placing his hands behind him. “Listen here,” he said;— “you think we got time to read a lot o’ nothin’ in your ole hand-writin’ that nobody can read anyhow, and then go and toil and moil to print it on our printin’-press? I guess we got work enough printin’ what we write for our newspaper our own selves! My goodness, Florence, I told you this isn’t any child’s play!”
For the moment, Florence appeared to be somewhat baffled. “Well,” she said. “Well, you better put this poem in your ole newspaper if you want to have anyhow one thing in it that won’t make everybody sick that reads it.”
“I won’t do it!” Herbert sai
d decisively.
“What you take us for?” his partner added.
“All right, then,” Florence responded. “I’ll go and tell Uncle Joseph and he’ll take this printing-press back.”
“He will not take it back. I already did tell him how you kept pokin’ around, tryin’ to run everything, and how we just worried our lives out tryin’ to keep you away. He said he bet it was a hard job; that’s what Uncle Joseph said! So go on, tell him anything you want to. You don’t get your ole poem in our newspaper!”
“Not if she lived to be two hunderd years old!” Henry Rooter added. Then he had an afterthought. “Not unless she pays for it.”
“How do you mean?” Herbert asked, puzzled by this codicil.
Now Henry’s brow had become corrugated with no little professional impressiveness. “You know what we were talkin’ about this morning?” he said. “How the right way to run our newspaper, we ought to have some advertisements in it and everything? Well, we want money, don’t we? We could put this poem in our newspaper like an advertisement; — that is, if Florence has got any money, we could.”
Herbert frowned. “If her ole poem isn’t too long I guess we could. Here, let’s see it, Florence.” And, taking the sheet of paper in his hand, he studied the dimensions of the poem, without paining himself to read it. “Well, I guess, maybe we can do it,” he said. “How much ought we to charge her?”
This question sent Henry Rooter into a state of calculation, while Florence observed him with veiled anxiety; but after a time he looked up, his brow showing continued strain. “Do you keep a bank, Florence — for nickels and dimes and maybe quarters, you know?” he inquired.
It was her cousin who impulsively replied for her. “No, she don’t,” he said.
“Not since I was about seven years old!” And Florence added sharply, though with dignity: “Do you still make mud pies in your back yard, pray?”
“Now, see here!” Henry objected. “Try and be a lady anyway for a few minutes, can’t you? I got to figure out how much we got to charge you for your ole poem, don’t I?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 321