Mal Moulee Part 7

"When I first came abroad I was accompanied by a very devout young man.

He had often taken me to task for my Club habits. 'A fashionable club is the ante-room to a gambler's h.e.l.l,' he said; and so far as I knew, he lived up to the rigorous code of morals he preached to others. What was my amazement to find his curiosity fairly unsatiable in regard to the wicked side of Parisian life.

"Beautiful parks, fine operas, and grand cathedrals and works of art, were all neglected by him, until he had explored, to his satisfaction, all the gaming-houses and variety theatres in the city of Paris. It was very amusing."

When Percy made his adieux to the ladies it was with the understanding that he should dine with them at their temporary home, on the Avenue Josephine, the following afternoon, and escort them to the theatre in the evening.

"Never before, Dolores," said Mrs. Butler, after Percy had taken his departure, "did I see you so charming as you have been to-day. Mr.

Durand will be a phenomenal sort of man if he remains impervious to your charms, my dear. But then I have heard that some affair in his early life quite wrecked his heart. And so, I suppose, he has nothing but friendship to give any woman, now."

If Mrs. Butler's secret wish was to rouse the woman's desire (latent in almost every feminine heart), to strive for that which is supposed to be unattainable, it signally failed. Her remark simply gave Dolores an added sense of freedom and rest in Mr. Durand's society. "Love is like measles," she reasoned--"not liable to occur the second time."

Meanwhile Percy was saying to himself:

"She is one of the most beautiful of her s.e.x. She pleases the eye, and entertains the mind, without touching the heart.

"Yet, it is a dangerous situation for any man to a.s.sume--this role of intimate friend to a lovely woman, which seems suddenly to have fallen to me. It would be wisdom on my part, and save no end of trouble, probably, if I took refuge in flight at once."

Yet what man ever fled from such sweet danger?

CHAPTER IX.

JOURNALISTIC DISCUSSIONS.

Percy did not "fly" for another month, and during that time seldom a day pa.s.sed that he did not spend a portion of it with Mrs. Butler and Dolores.

To the artistic rooms on the Avenue Josephine, where he was made to feel so perfectly at home, he sometimes brought a friend, and often found a bevy of bright people when he arrived.

Dolores had formed a choice circle of acquaintances among the artists, musicians, and scholars, during her prolonged sojourn abroad.

It seemed to Percy that he had never in his entire life before, met so many charming people as he encountered under Dolores's roof in that one month. There was as great a difference between the conventional society to which he had been accustomed, and the interesting clique which graced Dolores's parlors, as there is between a hotel bill of fare, and the _menu_ prepared for the palate of an epicure. One, monotonous insipid and flavorless; the other, spiced, appetizing and varied.

Among the score of people whom Dolores gathered together under her roof, there was a Mr. Elliott, a young English artist, a clever, cultured fellow, though something of a c.o.c.kney; Monsieur Th.o.r.e, a famed historian and legislator; Madame Volkenburg, a middle-aged widow of a German professor, a lady of vast experience and wide culture, whose conversation overflowed with interesting reminiscences; and Homer Orton, an American journalist, genius and wit.

Nowhere else, in no other cla.s.s or profession, can be found so much talent, and so much wit, as exists among our American journalists, however they bury the former, and misdirect the latter gift.

With a better understanding of "_n.o.blesse oblige_," with a little more delicacy refining their wit, with a great deal more reverence for the sacredness of homes and personalities, to what heights might not these peerless minds elevate American journalism?

"Do you know," said Mr. Elliott, one evening in Percy's presence, addressing the journalist, "do you know, Mr. Orton, you have greatly surprised me?"

"Quite likely," responded Homer Orton, soberly gazing at his English friend. "We Americans have always been surprising you Englishmen ever since--but never mind dates. I should really like to know in what especial manner I have surprised you, Mr. Elliott?"

"Well, in fact--now I beg you will not be offended, but in the fact that you are such a deuced fine fellow, you know. I had quite another impression of American newspaper men. I fancied you would not be admitted to such society as this--that you were all fellows who would sacrifice your best friends for an item, you know--"

"So we would--that is, most of us," Homer interrupted, gravely. "I am a rare and beautiful exception."

"And I thought you were hardly the sort of person a lady like Miss King would want in her home, you know," the Englishman continued. "But I find you really a delightful fellow, you know, and quite a gentleman."

"Sir," said Homer, rising with his hand upon his heart, "language fails me before a compliment like this. It is a new and trying position for me to hear such words spoken of myself, and I hope you will excuse me while I walk to another part of the room and un.o.bserved wipe away a tear of grat.i.tude."

Then, suddenly dropping his tone of levity, the young man continued:

"But, seriously speaking, you are justified in your opinion of us as a cla.s.s, Mr. Elliott, and it is to be regretted. As Mr. Durand will testify, our American eagle flaps his wings often with too much freedom."

Percy, when appealed to, was glad to express his opinion upon a subject to which he had recently given much thought.

"It is a question," he said, "which must before many years be decided--just where the freedom of the press should end and where the rights of individuals should begin. It seems to me that even our so-called best newspapers take unnecessary and unlicensed liberties in these days."

"But the public appet.i.te demands such a varied and highly-spiced diet that we are obliged to gratify it in every legitimate manner possible.

If we do not, our rival sheet will," explained Homer Orton.

"That is all very well when you _keep_ to legitimate means. But I call the invasion of homes, and the cruel, and often untruthful, a.s.sertions concerning the private life, of unoffending individuals, illegitimate means of feeding a depraved appet.i.te. The average newspaper humorist, who utterly disregards the truth, in his anxiety to concoct a taking item, I do not consider a necessary feature of high journalism--do you?

If he only succeeds in raising a laugh, he considers his object in life attained. He reminds me of the tribe of the Damaras, who are described as so utterly heartless that they roar with laughter on beholding one of their number torn to pieces by a wild beast."

"Still it is not so much heartlessness, as insensibility and thoughtlessness, and a desire to be bright and witty, which causes a good many of these things to be written," Homer responded.

"I heard that very excuse, advanced only the other day," Percy replied, "and I heard this response made which is quite _apropos_ now. It has been observed by thoughtful naturalists that often when a lion or a bull kills a man, the poor beast really has no malice in his heart, and does not mean any harm. He only intended to play with his accidental comrade of the moment. But then a lion has only claws and a bull only horns with which to make their humor felt, and so they are fatally misunderstood.

It would seem to me, then, that the chief of a large newspaper ought to consider himself as responsible for those accidents as the keeper of a menagerie."

"But often the chief of a first-cla.s.s newspaper has no idea of the really scurrilous items which creep into his paper," explained Homer.

"Like the chief cook in a large hotel, he cannot taste of every dish prepared by his subordinates, and no managing editor could survive the strain, you know, of looking over his humorist's column every day. Our madhouses would overflow, if such a method of journalism were inaugurated."

"Still, it is a lax system which permits such errors (if we can call them errors) to occur," Percy insisted, "and if guests were constantly being poisoned or rendered ill through the criminal carelessness of the hotel cook, I fancy he would be called to account for not knowing what dishes his subordinates prepared. A newspaper should be the friend and companion of the people, and a welcome guest in every home. Instead, it is too often a treacherous spy, a maligner and falsifier. Almost every day we read statements concerning people, which are absolutely without foundation, and which result in no end of mischief and trouble."

"You no doubt refer to people in public life--politicians, authors, actors, and the like--do you not?" asked Homer. "I know they are considered targets for the shots of our humorists all over the country, but then you must remember that if a man gives his name voluntarily to the world, and forces his work or his personality upon the public, that he cannot expect both the benefits of fame and the seclusion of private life. It is unreasonable. He has in a measure given himself over to the public, and he must take the consequences. And, really, the fact that the busy newspapers of the present day give time and s.p.a.ce to discussion or comments upon any individual ought to be considered highly complimentary."

"That depends entirely upon the nature of the comments," answered Percy.

"Nor do I refer entirely to public people. Our wealthy men, and their wives and daughters, are subjected to the same coa.r.s.e comments. Their personal defects are ridiculed, and the pitiless and ghastly electric light of publicity is turned on their most sacred joys or sorrows. Items devoid of truth and wit, appear every day concerning people who have committed no offense greater than to succeed in some special calling.

They are copied, enlarged upon, and believed by a majority of the ma.s.ses. It is a degenerate system of journalism which permits it. It is high time some manly journalist began a crusade against it."

"I agree with you, perfectly," Homer Orton answered. "I would like to have the leading newspapers of the country band together to protect the people from insult and petty libels in their columns: and I would like to see the Imaginary Interviewer done away with by every respectable journal."

"What is the Imaginary Interviewer, pray?" queried the Englishman.

"He is a reporter, who, if he is refused admittance by any person he wishes to interview, deliberately invents an interview; describes the personality and manufactures the conversation to suit his own taste. No one was ever more misused in this respect than your own Oscar Wilde, unless it was Mrs. Langtry. The most astounding postures and inane remarks were attributed to them by people who never saw them. It is not, however, our first-cla.s.s journals which have permitted this."

"Would you not recommend the abolishing of the interviewer entirely?"

suggested Percy.

"Certainly not," Homer responded. "The newspaper interviewer is a benefit to the press, to the country, and to all public people who have a name and a reputation to make. That is, when he is a truthful gentleman, and does not abuse the hospitality of those who admit him to their homes."

"The school-girl who sends for the autograph of a public man pays him a graceful compliment, and he should write it for her without a murmur."

"Just in the same way, the whole public offers a quiet ovation to the man of reputation when an interviewer presents his card. The newspaper would never ask for an interview to publish, unless the ma.s.ses of its readers desired it. And the interviewer should be met courteously, and the public man should realize that this sort of thing is the duty he pays on fame. If he has positively nothing of interest to say to the interviewer, or is too busily engaged to be interrupted, he should tell the caller so in a respectful and polite manner. Many a public man is badly treated by the reporter in print, because he treated the reporter badly in his house."

"But what have you to say of the interviewer who is well treated, and then repays the hospitality he has received by an article bristling with ridicule and untruthful misrepresentations of the personality or conversation of his entertainer? I have known this to occur."