XX
THE PARTNERS
The thousand envelopes were printed and delivered. Mr. English expressedhimself as entirely satisfied, and allowed the new firm to experiment onbill heads. Mr. Orde promised an order of more envelopes when these werefinished.
Johnny's commercial instincts were thoroughly aroused. He saw visions ofwealth beyond the dreams of wood-box-filling or street-sprinkling withthe garden hose in summer. In that community even Johnny English had toearn his own pocket money. Bobby, too, entered into the game withenthusiasm--for over a week. Then he grew tired of the mechanicalrepetition of that which he had acquired so painfully. It no longerinterested him to set the type, to lock the form, to ink and clean theink plates. He had carried these things to their last refinement ofskill. As for the actual printing--the endless insetting of paper,pulling down on the lever, removing the paper--this he could no longerstand for more than half an hour at a time. Then a deep lethargy seizedhis every faculty. His mind sank to stupor. Time no longer possesseddimensions, but blew into a vast Present which was never going to cease.If he kept at it a half-hour after this condition manifested itself heemerged from the ordeal as tired and sleepy as though he had undergonehard physical labour. It was more than mere boredom; it was a revolt ofthe soul.
At first his loyalty to the firm and his sense of duty drove him on.Then gradually he relinquished the printing to Johnny. That young mancould cheerfully have stuck to the press twelve hours a day, if he hadbeen permitted. Each printed bit of paper laid aside on the growing pileto his left represented just that much more pocket money.
So, strangely enough, the relative position of the two boys toward thework in hand was reversed. At first, when the mechanical difficultiesseemed insurmountable, Bobby's perseverance had been inexhaustible,while Johnny was a dozen times inclined to let the whole problem gosmash. Now, when the task of feeding into the press the thousandnecessary to fill orders seemed endless, Johnny's patience rose morethan adequate to the occasion, while Bobby's spirit shrank at the meresize of it.
Finally matters adjusted themselves so that Bobby saw to the alignment,the perfection of the impression, all the rest of getting ready; thenJohnny took hold.
But one day Bobby, walking glumly over to the composing stone, suggestedsomething new.
"Let's start a newspaper," said he.
The clang of the press came to an abrupt stop.
"Let's start a newspaper," he repeated. "We've got enough pica to printone page at a time."
Rashly Johnny agreed. All went well until it came time to print thesheet. Eighteen subscribers were secured at five cents a copy. Johnnyand Bobby wrote the entire number between them. Bobby set it up,happily. Johnny, also happily, turned out certain letter-heads at thepress. Then came time to print. And at that moment trouble began.
The first copy was legible but smudgy. Bobby was not satisfied andattempted improvement, most of which, so far from improving, gave causefor fresh defects. Johnny was standing about impatiently.
"Come on," said he at last, "that's good enough. They can read it, allright, and those few letters don't matter. Let it go at that."
But Bobby shook his head and carried the form back to the composingstone.
Four days he worked over the first page of the _Weekly Eagle_. Johnnyexpostulated, stormed, pleaded with tears in his eyes.
"Let's let the whole thing slide," he begged. "All we get out of itanyway is less'n a dollar and think of all the time we're wasting. Thatjob for Mr. Fowler isn't all done, and Smith's Meat Market is going toorder some bill-heads."
But Bobby was obstinate. Finally Johnny, in disgust, left him to his owndevices.
The world for Bobby contained but one thing. His recollections of thattime are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He wonfinally and duly delivered the eighteen copies--letter-perfect. Probablyfive hundred other and imperfect examples of the _Weekly Eagle_ foundtheir way into the furnace.
Johnny plucked up heart and returned, only to find that the printingpress question was dead as far as Bobby was concerned.
"I'm sick of printing," was all Bobby would say, and no argument as tounexploited wealth could move him. The subject had not only lostinterest, but mere casual thought of its details brought on a faintrepetition of the mental lethargy. The sight of the press and its variedappurtenances threw his mind into the defensive blank coma whichrendered him incapable of the simplest intellectual effort. This wassomething as outside Bobby's control as the beating of his heart. He didnot understand it, nor attempt to analyze it.
"I'm sick of it," said he; just as after the labour of building a fortin Monrovia, he had with the same remark deserted his companions on thethreshold of its enjoyment.
Bobby thought he exercised a choice when he turned from printing, justas he chose whether to walk on the right or on the left side of thestreet. In reality it would have been impossible for him to re-enter hisinterest, his enthusiasm; impossible even for him to have accomplishedthe mechanical labour of the trade save at an utterly disproportionateexpense of nervous energy.
Bobby did not know this; of course, Johnny was not capable of suchanalysis. The only human being who might have understood and worked incorrection of the tendency, read the affair amiss. Mrs. Orde was onlytoo glad to get Bobby into the open air again, and saw in hisabandonment of this feverish enthusiasm only cause for rejoicing.
So Bobby threw his friend into despair by declining to go on with aflourishing business. "Bime by," said he. "I'm sick of it, now." As amatter of fact he never touched the printing press again. His parentsdeplored the useless waste of a large amount of money and drew the usualconclusion that it is foolish to buy children expensive things. No doubtfrom that standpoint the affair was deplorable; yet there is this to benoted, that Bobby's enthusiasm blew out only after he had thought allaround the subject, back front, bottom and sides. He knew that printingpress theoretically and practically and all it could do. As long as itwithheld the smallest secret Bobby clung to it, his soul at white heat.But the repetition and again the repetition of what he had learnedthoroughly struck cold his every higher faculty. He shrugged it all fromhim, and turned with unabated freshness his inquiring child's eyes towhat new the world had to offer him.