CHAPTER XX.
John Fenton had once called Mr. Robinson, of the Trumpet, an argus-eyed editor. But Fenton did not fully realize how searching and far-reaching was his superior’s gaze. The managing editor of a New York newspaper is seldom appreciated at his true worth by his subordinates. They are too closely in touch with the methods by which he produces his effects to grant him that admiration that the readers of his newspaper feel for him. It is enough if the navigator of a journalistic craft obtains the respect and loyalty of his crew. He must not expect to be the object of hero-worship in the forecastle. It depends upon which end of the telescope you place before your eye, the impression that the moon makes on your mind. The public looks at a famous editor through the large end of the instrument, while his subordinates view him through the small end. Rare and precious is the newspaper potentate who can stand both tests.
Editor Robinson of the Trumpet was not a great man,—a creature that the end of the century seems disinclined to produce in any line of human endeavor,—but he possessed ripe experience, a wide range of vision, and a keen appreciation of the merits and demerits of the material at his disposal. In judging the availability of a piece of news or the advisability of a certain line of editorial policy his mind worked with great rapidity and acuteness. When it came to rendering a final verdict regarding any man with whom he came in contact he was hesitating and conservative. He had learned by experience that it is dangerous to admire Dr. Jekyll too much until you have proved conclusively that he is not a Mr. Hyde.
There were two men in the office who had, of late, been under Mr. Robinson’s close inspection. He was making a thorough study of John Fenton and Richard Stoughton for a cherished purpose that he had long had at heart. Many circumstances had combined to lead him to the conclusion that slowly but surely these two men had rendered themselves eligible for a post that neither of them had ever dreamed of filling.
A man is always going up or coming down in a newspaper office,—a fact that proves how like the world at large a journalistic sanctum is. In Mr. Robinson’s eyes, Fenton and Stoughton were on the up-grade. Regarding Fenton he had long been in doubt. He had grown to look upon him as a man of ability who had lost all ambition, and whose questionable habits and iconoclastic tendencies of thought had unfitted him for any higher place than he already held. Fenton’s long service in the city department and his thorough knowledge of men and affairs in the metropolis had rendered him a valuable assistant, in spite of his peccadilloes and theories; but that he would ever become fitted for a higher line of journalistic achievement Mr. Robinson had never imagined. For some months, however, the managing editor’s keen eye had observed a great change in Fenton’s demeanor and appearance. Much to Mr. Robinson’s astonishment, he saw that his subordinate was inclined to refrain from alcoholic stimulants, that he had grown very particular about his attire and that he seemed fond of the society of young Stoughton.
Mr. Robinson was what the world calls a self-made man. He had “come up from the case,” as the expression goes, having been a journeyman printer in the days of his youth. It is a curious fact that a man who has made a success of his life in spite of heavy obstacles can never destroy a certain undefined admiration for a man who, being born to wealth, position, and leisure has carelessly thrown away his advantages and fallen from his high estate. The fact that Fenton had abandoned as useless toys the very things for which Robinson had been striving all his life gave the city editor,—as Fenton was at this time,—a unique place in the eyes of his chief. In his heart of hearts, he considered Fenton a being superior to himself; and it was this feeling that often added a brusqueness to his manner when dealing with his subordinate that had not tended to make their relations very cordial. But, then, cordiality between the heads of the various departments of a metropolitan daily is a gem as rare as it is precious. Down in the pressroom a great object-lesson is presented to the eyes of a thoughtful man. Here is a vast amount of machinery, the most insignificant part of which is obliged to work in perfect union with all other parts, small or great. By the constant application of oil, friction is prevented and the gigantic presses perform their task in a way that shows what tremendous results can be obtained by a complicated machine when absolute sympathy between all the varying features is maintained.
How different is the working of the great brain-engine above stairs! Here man rubs against man, jealousy and discontent and favoritism do what they can to clog the machinery; and the more one knows about the inner life of a newspaper-office, the more the wonder grows that the newspaper of to-day approximates so closely to the highest journalistic ideal. You may find flaws, gentle reader, in what your favorite journal says, but its typographical make-up is always perfect. Bear in mind that the brain-machine that turns out the ideas it presents is laboring under the obstacles that poor, weak, erring human nature begets, while the engines that deal with the materialistic make-up of the paper are influenced neither by jealousy nor heart-burning, neither by revenge nor malice. If the harmony that prevails in the workings of the press-room could dominate the editorial departments, an ideal newspaper would be the result—a result that will not be obtained until the millennium has done its elevating work.
It is just possible that Mr. Robinson was not altogether at ease in his mind over the advance that John Fenton had made in his outward bearing and in his position and influence on the Trumpet. One of the chief occupations of an editor in charge of a great newspaper consists in keeping his mind awake to possible rivals. That Fenton had become in the last few months a very important factor in the office was apparent to the most insignificant reporter; and to Mr. Robinson the desirability of checking the rise of a possible competitor seemed imperative. But hard steel or cold poison is not available in these days for the removal of a man who stands in our way. In a newspaper-office, however, there are weapons that take their place. One is promotion, the other is exile. In the case of John Fenton, Mr. Robinson had decided, after mature consideration, to combine both.
“I have sent for you, Mr. Fenton,” remarked the editor, smiling cordially as he wheeled around in his chair and motioned to his subordinate to be seated, “to discuss quite an important matter.”
“Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes,” muttered Fenton to himself, as he drew up a chair and looked at his chief inquiringly.
“Pardon me, I didn’t catch your remark?” and Mr. Robinson looked at Fenton suspiciously.
“‘I am at your service Mr. Robinson,’ I said,” answered Fenton, smiling.
“Ah, very good of you! Well, now tell me, Mr. Fenton, what is your opinion of young Stoughton? You have seen a great deal of him, have you not?”
“Yes; he’s a very clever boy. I’m exceedingly fond of him.”
“You find him thoroughly companionable?”
“Extremely so,” answered Fenton, wondering what the editor was getting at. Mr. Robinson did not waste time in the afternoon on unimportant gossip.
“And now, Mr. Fenton,” continued Robinson, putting the tips of his fingers together, after a habit that pertained to his more Machiavellian moods, “how long is it since you were on the other side?”
“Fifteen years, I think,” answered Fenton reflectively. “I spent two years in London and on the Continent just before I went into newspaper work.”
“Hum! Very good. Well, the fact is, Mr. Fenton, I have long had a scheme in mind for making a great improvement in our foreign service. Stilson, you know, has resigned the London office. My idea is this: I am very much pleased with young Stoughton’s work as a paragrapher. He’s very pithy, and his style has really created quite a sensation. Now, there is no man in the profession who has a more artistic estimate of news than you have, Mr. Fenton. Furthermore, your acquaintanceship with men and affairs has been wide, and, I might say, international. It seems to me that if you took the London office, with Stoughton as your assistant, we could make a great feature of a line of news-matter in which we have been pretty weak of late years. You catch my idea? You’re to shoot the game, and Stoughton’s to dress it for the table. I needn’t tell you, of course, that your salary will be much larger in London than it is here, and the work will be much easier and of a character more acceptable to your tastes, Mr. Fenton.”
John Fenton’s mind had been very busy while Mr. Robinson was speaking. Three months before he would not have hesitated a moment to accept the editor’s proposition. He was not sure now that it did not offer a solution to a difficulty that he had not yet had strength of mind enough to solve himself. But Fenton was not a man to do anything in a hurry—unless it was to fall in love. He looked at Mr. Robinson in silence for a moment, and then said,—
“There is much that is very satisfactory to me in what you have said, Mr. Robinson. But I’m a slow, rather conservative man, and I seldom come to a conclusion in a hurry. May I have a day or two to weigh this matter?”
“Oh, certainly, certainly,” answered the editor, not wholly pleased at the position Fenton had taken. “Give me your answer day after to-morrow. It will do as well then as now.”
Fenton arose to go.
“And about Stoughton?” he asked.
Mr. Robinson sat silent for a time. Finally he said,—
“I leave him to you, Mr. Fenton. Talk the matter over with him, and bring him with you when you come to me Monday. Good-day.”
Fenton returned to his desk in a more excited mood than he had expected ever to feel again. When a man renews his youth the rejuvenation is apt to bring with it many surprises. That it should make any important difference to him whether he lived in New York or London was an astonishing fact to John Fenton. It was an unpleasant truth that, in a way, forced him to come to a decision that he had been avoiding for a long time. Should he or should he not give up all thought of making Gertrude Van Vleck his wife, was the question that haunted him.
And Mr. Robinson, gazing moodily out of the window in his room up-stairs, was thinking that John Fenton’s hesitation was due to ambition.