Part 24 (1/2)

The editor pitched another cigarette-end out of the window. Again a shout from the street indicated that it had become a bone of bitter contest among the town's smokers of the _sub-rosa_ cla.s.s.

”Suppose I were to tell you,” said Smith slowly, ”that I antic.i.p.ate a shakeup here which will cut the backbone out of my profits? What would you say to that?”

”I suppose I should say that it was ever the custom of rats to desert a sinking s.h.i.+p. So that was your mainspring, was it?”

”On the contrary,” said Smith. ”I am taking what is technically known as a small rise out of you. You ask why I sold. It was a man with the price. Money,” began Mr. Smith, ”screams. The cash on my desk was this man's way of doing business, and a good deal it was. However, it'll net him six per cent year in and out, at that--a good rate in these lean times. I, of course, did better. I got--shall we say?--pickings. The past tense already, heigho! Well, it's been a most instructive life. My father taught me to write. He was esteemed a good editor, and he was, but at eighteen I was correcting his leaders for him. Hand Greeley a soft pencil and a pa.s.s at the encyclopedia, so he used to say, and he could prove anything under the sun. I am like that, except that--well, I don't believe I need the encyclopedia. It wasn't Greeley who made the remark, of course. It's a rule on the press to pin all journalistic anecdotes on Greeley. You sign the pledge when you go in. To be accounted strictly moral,” continued Smith, ”an editor must be blind in one eye and astigmatic in the other. Then he rings the bull's-eye of Virtue ten times out of ten, and the clergy bleats with delight. You can't find spiritual candor anywhere with a telescope, except in the criminal cla.s.ses. There are no Pharisees there, G.o.d be praised! For my part, I see both sides of every question that was ever asked, and usually--don't you think?--both of them are right. I first adopt my point of view and subsequently prove it. Obviously, this is where the pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory cla.s.ses, I suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have, of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open forever, and a little while ago, I telegraphed down and took the best. A grateful wire came in five minutes ahead of you. And that,” he concluded wearily, in the flattest tones of a curiously flat voice, ”is the life story of C. Smith, editor, up to the hour of going to press.”

Varney, who had never once been tempted to interrupt this strange apologia, struggled with an impulse to feel desperately sorry for Mr.

Smith, and almost overcame it.

”Smith,” he said, in a moment, ”why don't you tell me why you sold?”

The editor got up and stared out of the window. Presently he turned, an odd faint flush tingeing his ordinarily colorless cheek. His air of smooth cynicism was gone, for once; and Varney saw then, as he had somehow suspected before, that the editor of the _Gazette_ wore polished bravado as a cloak and that underneath it he carried a rather troubled soul.

”You are right,” said Smith, ”I--was twigging you again. Let us say,”

he added, looking at Varney with a kind of shamefaced defiance, ”that a man gets tired of living on pickings after a while.”

If he had been ten times a liar, ten times a slanderer and a.s.sa.s.sin of character, a man would have known that the young editor spoke the truth then. That knowledge disarmed Varney. To have sold the _Gazette_ to one who would prost.i.tute it still further was hardly a n.o.ble act; but for Smith it meant unmistakably that he wanted to cut loose from the old evil walks where he had done ill by his honor and battened exceedingly.

”All along,” said Varney slowly, ”I have had a kind of sneaking feeling that there was a spark left in you yet.”

He picked up his hat and stick again, and faced the pale young editor.

”Smith, you have done me a devilish wrong. You have knowingly printed a vile slander about me, aware that the natural result of your falsehood was that some poor drunken fool would shoot me down from behind. When I walked in here five minutes ago, I had two purposes in mind. One was to buy your paper. The other was to throw you down the front stairs. I am leaving now without doing either. I abandoned the first because I had to; I abandon the second, voluntarily, because--I don't quite know why--but I think it is because it seems inappropriate to hit a man when he is down and something is just driving him to try to scramble up.”

He put on his hat and started to go; but Smith stopped him with a gesture. He let his eye, from which all sign of emotion had faded, run slowly over Varney's slender figure.

”I wasn't such a slouch in my younger days,” he said. ”Football at my prep school, football and crew at my college. Boxed some at odd moments; was counted fair to middling. Some offhand practice since with people I've roasted--agents, actors, and the like. As to that throwing downstairs proposition now, if you'd care to try it on--”

Varney shook his head. ”I don't know that I can explain it--and no one regrets it more than I--but all the wish to _smash_ you, Smith, has gone away somewhere. The bottom has dropped out of it. Good-bye.”

”You are going? So am I,” said Smith, with a fair imitation of his usual lightness. ”Going away for good. I hope you will come through this all right. I'll never see you again. Shake hands, will you? You couldn't know it, of course, but--it--is possible that I owe something to--you two fellows.”

He stood motionless, half turned away, thin hands hanging loosely at his sides.

Varney, who had colored slightly, took a last look at him. ”No,” he said, suddenly much embarra.s.sed, ”I--I'm afraid I couldn't do it in the way you mean, and so there wouldn't be any point in it. But I--I do wish you luck with all my heart.”

He shut the door, and started down the stairway; and he straightway forgot Smith in the returning tide of his own difficulties. He saw clearly that there was no longer any hope; his plans were wrecked past mending. Persuading Miss Carstairs to keep her engagement to-morrow, his one great problem this morning, had become an unimportant detail now.

Charlie Hammerton, with his merciless knowledge, filled the whole horizon like a menacing mirage.

It would not be enough to close the boy's month till after the luncheon and then let it open to babble. For Elbert Carstairs had flatly drawn the line at a yellow aftermath of sensation. He would count a tall-typed scandal the day after to-morrow, when his daughter was with him, fully as bad as the same affliction now. And, the newspaper finally lost to them, there was no conceivable way in which that scandal could be averted now.

But about the moment when his foot hit the bottom of the worn stairs, the door at the head of them burst open, and a curiously stirred voice, which he had some difficulty in recognizing as Smith's, called his name.

”Varney! oh, Varney! I--really meant to tell you--and then I forgot.”

He turned and saw the editor's pale face hanging over the banisters.