The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (3 page)

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 about 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.

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?”

“I will say that you refuse to let me marry him, father and—” She hesitated a moment before she lifted her eyes fully and formidably to her father’s face. “And that I shall marry him anyhow.”

The professor did not cavort when this statement came from his daughter. He nodded and then passed into a period of reflection. Finally he asked: “But when? That is the point. When?”

The girl made a sad gesture. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Perhaps when you come to know Rufus better—”

“Know him better. Know that rapscallion better? Why, I know him much better than he knows himself. I know him too well. Do you think I am talking offhand about this affair? Do you think I am talking without proper information?”

Marjory made no reply.

“Well,” said the professor, “you may see Coleman on condition that you inform him at once that I forbid your marriage to him. I don’t understand at all how to manage these situations. I don’t know what to do. I suppose I should go myself and — No, you can’t see him, Majory.”

Still the girl made no reply. Her head sank forward and she breathed a trifle heavily.

“Marjory,” cried the professor, “it is impossible that you should think so much of this man.” He arose and went to his daughter. “Marjory, many wise children have been guided by foolish fathers, but we both suspect that no foolish child has ever been guided by a wise father. Let us change it. I present myself to you as a wise father. Follow my wishes in this affair and you will be at least happier than if you marry this wretched Coleman.”

She answered: “He is waiting for me.”

The professor turned abruptly from her and dropped into his chair at the table. He resumed a grip on his pen. “Go,” he said, wearily. “Go. But if you have a remnant of sense, remember what I have said to you. Go.” He waved his hand in a dismissal that was slightly scornful. “I hoped you would have a minor conception of what you were doing. It seems a pity.” Drooping in tears, the girl slowly left the room.

Coleman had an idea that he had occupied the chair for several months. He gazed about at the pictures and the odds and ends of a drawing-room in an attempt to take an interest in them. The great garlanded paper shade over the piano lamp consoled his impatience in a mild degree because he knew that Marjory had made it. He noted the clusters of cloth violets which she had pinned upon the yellow paper and he dreamed over the fact. He was able to endow this shade with certain qualities of sentiment that caused his stare to become almost a part of an intimacy, a communion. He looked as if he could have unburdened his soul to this shade over the piano lamp.

Upon the appearance of Marjory he sprang up and came forward rapidly. “Dearest,” he murmured, stretching out both hands. She gave him one set of fingers with chilling convention. She said something which he understood to be “Good-afternoon.” He started as if the woman before him had suddenly drawn a knife. “Marjory,” he cried, “what is the matter?” They walked together toward a window. The girl looked at him in polite enquiry. “Why?” she said. “Do I seem strange?” There was a moment’s silence while he gazed into her eyes, eyes full of innocence and tranquillity. At last she tapped her foot upon the floor in expression of mild impatience. “People do not like to be asked what is the matter when there is nothing the matter. What do you mean?”

Coleman’s face had gradually hardened. “Well, what is wrong?” he demanded, abruptly. “What has happened? What is it, Marjory?”

She raised her glance in a perfect reality of wonder. “What is wrong? What has happened? How absurd! Why nothing, of course.” She gazed out of the window. “Look,” she added, brightly, “the students are rolling somebody in a drift. Oh, the poor man!”

Coleman, now wearing a bewildered air, made some pretense of being occupied with the scene. “Yes,” he said, ironically. “Very interesting, indeed.”

“Oh,” said Marjory, suddenly, “I forgot to tell you. Father is going to take mother and me to Greece this winter with him and the class.”

Coleman replied at once. “Ah, indeed? That will be jolly.”

“Yes. Won’t it be charming?”

“I don’t doubt it,” he replied. His composure may have displeased her, for she glanced at him furtively and in a way that denoted surprise, perhaps.

“Oh, of course,” she said, in a glad voice. “It will be more fun. We expect to have a fine time. There is such a nice lot of boys going. Sometimes father chooses these dreadfully studious ones. But this time he acts as if he knew precisely how to make up a party.”

He reached for her hand and grasped it vise-like. “Marjory,” he breathed, passionately, “don’t treat me so. Don’t treat me—”

She wrenched her hand from him in regal indignation. “One or two rings make it uncomfortable for the hand that is grasped by an angry gentleman.” She held her fingers and gazed as if she expected to find them mere debris. “I am sorry that you are not interested in the students rolling that man in the snow. It is the greatest scene our quiet life can afford.”

He was regarding her as a judge faces a lying culprit. “I know,” he said, after a pause. “Somebody has been telling you some stories. You have been hearing something about me.”

“Some stories?” she enquired. “Some stories about you? What do you mean? Do you mean that I remember stories I may happen to hear about people?”

There was another pause and then Coleman’s face flared red. He beat his hand violently upon a table. “Good God, Marjory! Don’t make a fool of me. Don’t make this kind of a fool of me, at any rate.

Tell me what you mean. Explain—”

She laughed at him. “Explain? Really, your vocabulary is getting extensive, but it is dreadfully awkward to ask people to explain when there is nothing to explain.”

He glanced at her, “I know as well as you do that your father is taking you to Greece in order to get rid of me.”

“And do people have to go to Greece in order to get rid of you?” she asked, civilly. “I think you are getting excited.”

“Marjory,” he began, stormily.

She raised her hand. “Hush,” she said, “there is somebody coming.” A bell had rung. A maid entered the room. “Mr. Coke,” she said. Marjory nodded. In the interval of waiting, Coleman gave the girl a glance that mingled despair with rage and pride. Then Coke burst with half-tamed rapture into the room. “Oh, Miss Wainwright,” he almost shouted, “I can’t tell you how glad I am. I just heard to-day you were going. Imagine it. It will be more — oh, how are you Coleman, how are you?”

Marjory welcomed the new-comer with a cordiality that might not have thrilled Coleman with pleasure. They took chairs that formed a triangle and one side of it vibrated with talk. Coke and Marjory engaged in a tumultuous conversation concerning the prospective trip to Greece. The Sunday editor, as remote as if the apex of his angle was the top of a hill, could only study the girl’s clear profile. The youthful voices of the two others ran like bells. He did not scowl at Coke; he merely looked at him as if he gently disdained his mental calibre. In fact all the talk seemed to tire him; it was childish; as for him, he apparently found this babble almost insupportable.

“And, just think of the camel rides we’ll have,” cried Coke.

“Camel rides,” repeated Coleman, dejectedly. “My dear Coke.”

Finally he arose like an old man climbing from a sick bed. “Well, I am afraid I must go, Miss Wainwright.” Then he said affectionately to Coke: “Good-bye, old boy. I hope you will have a good time.”

Marjory walked with him to the door. He shook her hand in a friendly fashion. “Good-bye, Marjory,’ he said. “Perhaps it may happen that I shan’t see you again before you start for Greece and so I had best bid you God-speed — or whatever the term is — now. You will have a charming time; Greece must be a delightful place. Really, I envy you, Marjory. And now my dear child” — his voice grew brotherly, filled with the patronage of generous fraternal love,—” although I may never see you again let me wish you fifty as happy years as this last one has been for me.” He smiled frankly into her eyes; then dropping her hand, he went away.

Coke renewed his tempest of talk as Marjory turned toward him. But after a series of splendid eruptions, whose red fire illumined all of ancient and modern Greece, he too went away.

The professor was in his library apparently absorbed in a book when a tottering pale-faced woman appeared to him and, in her course toward a couch in a corner of the room, described almost a semi-circle. She flung herself face downward. A thick strand of hair swept over her shoulder. “Oh, my heart is broken! My heart is broken!”

The professor arose, grizzled and thrice-old with pain. He went to the couch, but he found himself a handless, fetless man. “My poor child,” he said. “My poor child.” He remained listening stupidly to her convulsive sobbing. A ghastly kind of solemnity came upon the room.

Suddenly the girl lifted herself and swept the strand of hair away from her face. She looked at the professor with the wide-open dilated eyes of one who still sleeps. “Father,” she said in a hollow voice, “he don’t love me. He don’t love me. He don’t love me at all. You were right, father.” She began to laugh.

“Marjory,” said the professor, trembling. “Be quiet, child. Be quiet.”

“But,” she said, “I thought he loved me — I was sure of it. But it don’t — don’t matter. I — I can’t get over it. Women — women, the — but it don’t matter.”

“Marjory,” said the professor. “Marjory, my poor daughter.”