Nine typewriters were stuttering over nine news stories; four electric fans were singing their siren songs of coolness; two telephone bells were ringing; one office boy, new to his job, was hurtling through the air on his way to the night city editor's desk, and the night city editor was discharging him because he was not coming faster; the managing editor was "calling down" a copy-reader; the editor-in-chief was telling the foreign editor he wished he could find an intelligent man to take the foreign desk; Mr. Nestor Hurd was swearing at Mr. Godfrey Morris. In other words, it was nearly midnight in the offices of theSearchlight.
I was sitting at my desk, feeling very low in my mind. That day, for the first time in my three weeks' experience as a reporter, Mr. Hurd had not given me an assignment. This was neither his fault nor mine. I had written a dozen good stories for him, besides many more that were at least up to the average. My assignments had taken me to all sorts of places strangely unlike the convent from which I had graduated only a month before—morgues, hospitals, police stations, the Tombs, the Chinesequarter—and I had always brought back something, even, as Mr. Gibson had once muttered, if it were merely a few typhoid germs. Mr. Gibson did not approve of sending me to all those places. Only that morning I had heard my chief tell Mr. Morris the Iverson kid was holding down her job so hard that the job was yelling for help. This was a compliment, for Mr. Hurd never joked about any one who worked less than eighteen hours a day.
I knew he hated to see me idle now, even for a few hours, and I did not like it myself. But we both had to bear it, for this had been one of the July days when nothing happened in New York. Individuals were born, and married, and died, and were run over by automobiles, as usual; but, as Mr. Hurd said, "the element of human interest was lacking." At such times the newspapers fill their space with symposiums on "Can a Couple Live on Eight Dollars a Week?" or "Is Suicide a Sin?" Or they have a moral spasm over some play and send the police to suppress it. The night before Mr. Hurd had sent Gibson, his star reporter, with a police inspector, to see a play he hoped theSearchlightcould have a moral spasm over. Mr. Gibson reported that the police inspector had left the theater wiping his eyes and saying he meant to look after his daughters better hereafter; so theSearchlightcould not have a spasm that time, and Mr. Hurd swore for five minutes without repeating once. He was wonderful that way, but not so gifted as Col. JohnCartwell, the editor-in-chief, who used to check himself between the syllables of his words to drop little oaths in. Such conversation was new and terrible to me. I had never heard any one swear before, and at first it deeply offended me. I thought a convent girl should not hear such things, especially a girl who intended to be a nun when she was twenty-one. But after a week or two I discovered that the editors never meant anything by their rude words; they were merely part of their breath.
To kill time that evening I wrote a letter to my mother—the first long one I had sent her since I left my Western home. I wrote it on one side of my copy paper, underlining my "u's" and overlining my "n's," and putting little circles around all my periods, to show the family I was a real newspaper woman at last. When I finished the letter I put it in an office envelope with a picture of theSearchlightbuilding on the outside, and began to think of going home. But I did not feel happy. I realized by this time that in newspaper work what one did yesterday does not matter at all; it is what one does to-day that counts. In the convent we could bask for a fortnight in the afterglow of a good recitation, and the memory of a brilliant essay would abide, as it were, for months. But full well I knew that if I gave Mr. Hurd the biggest "story" of the week on Thursday, and did nothing on Friday, he would go to bed Friday night with hurt, grieved feelings in his heart. This was Friday.
However, there was no sense in waiting round the office any longer, so I put on my hat and left theSearchlightbuilding, walking across City Hall Park to Broadway, where I took an open car up-town. I was getting used to being out alone late at night; but I had not ceased to feel an exultant thrill whenever I realized that I, May Iverson, just out of the convent and only eighteen, was actually part of the night life of great, wonderful, mysterious New York. Almost every man and woman I saw interested me because of the story I knew was hidden in each human heart; so to-night, as usual, I studied closely those around me. But my three fellow-passengers did not look as if they had any stories in them. They were merely tired, sleepy, perspiring men going home after a day of hard work. I envied them. I had not done a day's work, and I felt that I hardly deserved to rest. This thought was still in my mind when I left the car at Twenty-fifth Street and walked across Madison Square toward the house where I had rooms.
It was after midnight and very hot. The benches in the park still held many men—most of them the kind that stay there because they have no place else to go. There were a dozen tramps, some stretched at full length and sound asleep, others talking together. There were men out of work, trying to read the newspaper advertisements by the electric light from the globes far above them. Over the park hung a yellow mist that looked like fog but was merely heat,and from every side came the deep mutter of a great city on a summer night. The men around me were the types I had seen every time I crossed the Square, and, though I was always sorry for them, they no longer made me feel sick with sympathy, as they did at first.
But on a bench a little apart from the rest sat a girl who interested me at once. I noticed her first because she was young and alone, and then because she seemed to be in trouble. She was drooping forward in her seat, with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, staring hard at a spot on the ground in front of her. I could not see what it was. It looked like an ordinary brown stain. I usually walked very fast when I was alone at night, but now I slackened my pace and strolled toward the girl as slowly as I dared, studying her as I went. I could not see much of her face, which was in the hollow of her joined hands, but the way she was sitting—all bunched up—showed me that she was sick or discouraged, or both. She wore a gray dress with a very narrow skirt, and a wide, plain lace collar on the jacket. The suit had a discouraged air, as if it had started out to be smart and knew it had failed. Her hat was a cheap straw with a quill on it that had once been stiff but was now limp as an unstarched collar, and the coil of hair under it was neat and brown and wavy. Her plain lingerie blouse was cut low at the neck and fastened with a big black bow, and when I was closer to her I saw that both hershoes were broken at the sides. Altogether, she looked very sick and very poor, and when she changed her position a little to glance at a man who was passing, something about her profile made me think of one of my classmates at St. Catharine's.
I had tried to pass her, but now my feet would not take me. It was simply impossible to ignore a girl who looked like Janet Trelawney and who seemed to be in trouble. I saw when I got nearer that she was not Janet, but she might have been—and, anyway, she was a young girl like myself. We were taught at the convent that to intrude on another person's grief, uninvited, is worse than to intrude at any other time. Mere sympathy does not excuse it. But this looked like a special case, for there was no one else around to do anything for the girl in gray if she needed help. However, I did not speak to her at once. I merely sat down on the bench beside her and waited to see if she would speak to me.
She raised her head the minute she felt me there, and sat up and stared at me with eyes that were big and dark and had a queer, desperate expression in them. It seemed to startle her to know that some one was so near her, but after she had looked at me her surprise changed to annoyance, and she moved as if she meant to get up and go away. That full glance at her had shown me what she was like. She was not pretty. Her face was dreadfully pale, her nose was ordinary in shape, and her firmly set, thin lips made her mouth look like a straight line.I did not see how I could have thought of Janet Trelawney in connection with her. However, I felt that I could not drive her away from her seat, so I stopped her and begged her pardon and asked if she was ill or had hurt herself in any way, and if I could help her.
At first she did not answer me. She merely sat still and looked me over slowly, as if she were trying to make up her mind about me. The longer she looked the more puzzled she seemed to be. It had been raining when I left home in the morning, so I had on a mackintosh and a little soft rainy-day hat. I knew I did not look impressive, and it was plain that the girl in gray did not think much of me. At last she asked what I wanted, and her voice sounded hard and indifferent—even rude. I was disappointed in that, too, as well as in her face. It would have been more interesting, of course, to help a refined, educated girl. There was no doubt, however, that she needed help of some kind, so I merely repeated in different words what I had said to her at first. She laughed then—a laugh I did not like at all—and stared at me again in her queer way, as if she could not make me out. She seemed to be more puzzled over me than I was over her.
She kept on staring at me a long time with her singular eyes, that had dark circles under them. At last she asked me if I was a "society agent" or anything of that sort, and when I said I was not she asked how I happened to be out so late, and what Iwas doing. Her voice was as queer as her eyes—low and husky. I did not like her manner. It almost seemed as if she thought I had no right to be there, so I told her rather coldly that I was a reporter on theSearchlightand that I was on my way home from the office. As soon as I said that her whole manner changed. I have noticed this quick change in others when they hear that I am a newspaper woman. Some are pleased and some are not, but few remain cold and detached. The girl in gray actually looked relieved about something. She laughed again, a husky, throaty laugh that sounded, however, much nicer and more human than before, and gave me a good-natured little push.
"Oh," she said, "all right. Better beat it now. So-long." And she waved me away as if she owned the park bench. I hesitated. I was sorry now that I had stopped, and I wanted to go; but it seemed impossible to leave her there. I sat still for a moment, thinking it over, and suddenly she leaned toward me and advised me very earnestly not to linger till the roundsman came to take my pedigree. She said he was letting her alone because he knew she was only out of the hospital two days and up against it, but the healthy thing for me was to move on while the walking was good.
I was sorry she used so much slang, but of course the fact that she was unrefined and uneducated made her situation harder, and demanded even more sympathy from those better off. What she had saidabout the hospital and being "up against it" proved that I had done right to stop.
I told her I was going home in a few minutes, but that I wanted to talk to her first if she did not mind, and that there was no reason why I could not sit in the park if she could. She looked at me and laughed again as if I had made a joke, and the laugh brought on an attack of coughing which kept her busy for a full minute. When she had stopped I pointed out my home to her. It was on the opposite side of the Square, but we could see it quite plainly from where we sat. We could even see the windows of my rooms, which faced the park. The girl in gray looked up at them a long time.
"Gee!" she said, "you're lucky. Think of havin' a joint to fall into, and not knowin' enough to go to it when you got a chance." She added, "It wouldn't take me long to hop there if I owned the latch-key."
I asked her where she lived, and she laughed again and swung one knee over the other as we were taught in the convent not to do, and muttered that her present address was Madison Square Park, but she hoped it would not be permanent. Then she got up and said, "So-long," and started to go. I got up, too, and caught her arm. Her last words had simply thrilled me. I had read about girls being sick and out of work and being dismissed from the hospital with no money and no place to go to. But to read of them in books is one thing, and to see onewith your own eyes, to have one actually beside you, is another thing—and very different. My heart swelled till it hurt; so did my throat. The girl shook off my hand.
"Say," she said, and her voice was rude and cross again—"say, kid, what's the matter with you? You ain't got nothin' on me. Beat it, will you, or let me beat it. I can't set here and chin."
I held her arm. I knew what was the matter. She was too proud to ask for help. I knew another thing, too. There was a story in her, the story of what happens to the penniless girl in New York; and I could get it from her and write it and put the matter on a business basis that would mean as much to her as to me. Then I would have my story, the story I had not got to-day, and she would have a room and shelter, for of course I would give her some money in advance. My mind worked like lightning. I saw exactly how the thing could be done.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Forgive me—but you're hungry, aren't you?"
She stared at me again with that queer look of hers. Then she answered with simple truth. "You bet I am," she muttered.
"Very well," I said, and I put all the will-power I had in my voice. "Come with me and get something to eat. Then tell me what has happened to you. Perhaps I can make a newspaper story of it. If I can, we'll divide the space rates."
The girl in gray hung back. I could see that shewanted to go with me, but that for some reason she was afraid.
"Say," she said at last, "you're kidding ain't you? You don't look like a reporter nor act like one. Honest, you got me guessin'."
I did not like that very much, but I could not blame her. I knew it required more than three weeks to make one look like a real newspaper woman. I opened my hand-bag and took out one of the new cards I had had engraved, withThe New York Searchlightdown in the left-hand corner. It looked beautiful. I could see that at last the girl in gray was impressed. She stood with the card in her hand, staring down at it and thinking. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and clapped me on the back with a force that hurt me.
"Al-l-lright!" she said, drawling out the first word and shooting the second at me like a bullet from a pistol. "I got the goods. I'm just out of Bellevue. I'll give you a spiel about the way those guys treated me. I'll tell you about the House of Detention, too, and the judges and the police. Oh, I got a story, all right, all right. I'll give it to you straight."
She was pulling me along the street as she talked. She seemed to be in a great hurry all of a sudden, and in good spirits, but I realized how weak she was when I saw that even to walk half a block made her breath come in little gasps.
"It's the eats first, ain't it?" she asked; and I told her it certainly was. Then I asked her where wewere going, for it was clear that she was headed for some definite place.
"Owl-wagon," she told me, and saved her breath for the walk. I said we would take a car, but she pointed to the "owl-wagon" standing against the curb only a square away. The sight of it seemed to give her fresh strength. She made for it like a carrier-pigeon going home. When we reached it she sat down on the curbstone and nodded affably to the man inside the wagon. He nodded back at her and then came through the door and down the wagon steps to stare at me.
"Hello," he said to the girl in gray. "Heard you was sick. Glad to see you round again. What'll you eat?"
She did not waste breath on him, but made a gesture toward me. For a moment I think she could not speak.
"Give her a large glass of milk first," I told the man—"not too cold." When I handed it to her I advised her to drink it slowly, but she did not. It vanished in one long gulp. While the man was filling another glass for her I asked her what she wanted for supper. Eating at the "owl" was a new experience to me. I began to enjoy it, and to examine the different kinds of food that stood on the little shelves around the sides of the wagon. The girl in gray looked at me over the rim of her glass.
"What'll you stand for?" she asked.
I laughed and told her to choose for herself; shecould have everything in the wagon if she wanted it. Before the words were past my lips she was on the top step, selecting sandwiches and pie and ordering the man around as if she owned the outfit. She took three sandwiches, one of every kind he had, and two pieces of pie, and some doughnuts. When she had all she wanted she got down from the wagon and backed carefully to the curb, balancing the food in her hands. Then she sat down again and smiled at me for the first time. Something about that smile made me want to cry; but she seemed almost happy.
"Ain't this a bit of all right?" she asked, with her mouth full. She told the proprietor that his pies had less sawdust in them than last year and that he must have put some real lemon in one of them by mistake. While they talked I continued to inspect the inside of the wagon, but I heard the owl-man ask her a question in a whisper that must have reached across the street. "Say, Mollie, who's your friend?" he wanted to know.
The girl in gray told him it was none of his business. Her speech sounded strangely like that of Mr. Hurd. There were several of his favorite words in it. I sighed. She was a dreadfully disappointing girl, but she had been starving, and I had only to look at her face and her poor torn shoes to feel sympathy surge up in me again. When she was finishing her last piece of pie she beckoned to me to come and sit beside her on the curb.
"Now for the spiel," she said, and her husky voice sounded actually gay. "You got the key. Wind me up. I'll run 's long's I can."
I looked around. The street was deserted except for two men who stood beside the owl-wagon munching sandwiches. They stared hard at us, but did not come near us. There was a light in the wagon, too, by which I might have made some notes. But I did not want to get my story at one o'clock in the morning out on a public avenue. I wanted a room and a reading-lamp and chairs and a table. Six months later I could write any story on the side of a steam-engine while the engine was in motion, but this was not then. Besides, while the girl was eating I had had an inspiration. I asked her if she had really meant what she said about having no place to go but the park; and when she answered that she had, I asked her where she would have gone that night if I had not come along. She looked at me, hesitated a moment, and then turned sulky.
"Aw, what's the use?" she said. "Get busy. Do I give you the story, or don't I?"
I told her she did. Then I produced my inspiration. "Aren't there homes for the friendless," I asked her, "where girls are taken in for a night when they have no money?"
The girl in gray said there were, and sat eyeing me with her lower jaw lax and a weary, discouraged air.
"All right," I said, briskly; "let's go to one."
It took her a long time to understand what I meant. I had to explain over and over that I wanted to go with her and see exactly how girls were received and treated in such places and what sort of rooms and food they got, and that I must play the part of a penniless and friendless girl myself to get the facts; for of course if the people in the "refuge" knew I was a reporter everything would be colored for me. At last my companion seemed to grasp my meaning. She got up, wabbling a little on her weak knees, and started toward Twenty-third Street.
"Come on, then," she muttered, and added something about a "funeral" and some one being "crazy." She said the place we were going to was on First Avenue, not very far away, but I stopped a car and made her get into it. As we rode across town she told me the little she knew about the refuge. She said girls who went there paid a few cents for their rooms if they had money, but if not they were sometimes taken in without charge. She said breakfast was five cents and dinner ten or more, according to what one ate. The house closed at midnight, and she was afraid we could not get in; but she had been there twice before, and the matron knew she was sick, so perhaps she would admit us. I was to be Kittie Smith, a friend of hers from Denver.
I did not like the appearance of the place very much when we finally reached it. It was like a prison, I thought, and its black windows seemed to glower at us menacingly as we looked at them.We climbed the worn steps that led to the front door; there were only a few of them, but I had to help the girl in gray. When we reached the last one, she rang the bell labeled "Night bell." Beside it a brass sign that needed polishing told us the institution was a "Home for Friendless Girls." We could hear the bell jangling feebly far inside the house, as if it hung at the end of a loose wire, but for a long time no one answered it. The girl in gray sat down on the top step while I rang the bell again. Then at last steps came along the hall, the door opened an inch, and an old woman peered out at us. We could see nothing of her but her eyes and a bit of white hair. The eyes looked very cross, and the old woman's voice matched them when she spoke to us. She asked what we wanted and explained in the same breath that the house was closed and that it was too late to get in. The girl in gray leaned back against the door so the old woman could not close it, and said in a faint voice that she was sick.
"You remember me, Mrs. Catlin," she added, coaxingly. "Sure you do. I'm Mollie Clark. I been here before."
Mrs. Catlin opened the door another inch, grudgingly, and surveyed Mollie Clark.
"Humph!" she said. "It's you again, is it?"
She hesitated a moment and again looked Mollie Clark over. Then she flung the door wide without a word and let us into a long hall with a bare floor, whitewashed walls, and a flight of stairs at the end ofit. A gas-light, turned very low, burned at the rear, and the whole house smelled of carbolic acid. It seemed to me that no girl's situation anywhere could be as forlorn as that place looked. The old woman picked up a candle which stood on a table near the door and lit it at the solitary gas-jet. Then she motioned to us to follow her and started rheumatically up-stairs, grumbling under her breath all the way. She said it was against the rules to let us in at that hour, and she didn't know what the superintendent would say in the morning, and that there was only one room empty, anyhow, and we would have to be content with it. She led us up three flights of stairs and into a little hall-room at the front of the house. It had one window, which was open. Its furniture was a small bed, a wash-stand with a white bowl and pitcher, one towel, a table, and two chairs. My eyes must have lit up when they saw the table. That was what I wanted, and I did not care much about anything else.
Mrs. Catlin set the candle down on the table, whispered something about taking our "records" in the morning, warned us not to talk and disturb others, and went away without saying good night. The minute the door closed behind her I sat down at the table and got out my pencil and a fat note-book. I did not even stop to take off my hat, but Mollie Clark removed hers and threw it in a corner. Her hair, as I had suspected, was very pretty—soft and brown and wavy. She came and sat downopposite me at the table and waited for me to begin.
At first when we got into the room I had felt rather queer—almost nervous. But the minute I had my pencil in my hand and saw my note-book open before me I forgot the place we were in and was comfortable and happy. I smiled at Mollie Clark and told her to tell me all about herself—the whole story of her life, so that I could use as much or as little of it as I wanted to. Of course, she did not know how to begin. People never do. She rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, which seemed to be her favorite attitude, and sat quite still, thinking. To help her I asked a few questions. That started her, and at last she grew interested and more at ease and began to talk.
I will admit right here that before fifteen minutes had passed I was in an abyss of black despair. Someway I simply could not get hold of that story, and when I did begin to get hold of it I was frightened. It was not because she used so much slang. I understood that, or most of it. But some of the things she said I did not understand at all, and when I showed I did not, or asked her what they meant, she was not able to explain them. She put them in a different way, but I did not get them that way, either; and she looked so surprised at first, and so discouraged herself toward the end, that at last I stopped asking her questions and simply wrote down what she told me, whether I knew what itmeant or not. After a time I began to feel as if some one in a strange world was talking to me in an unknown tongue—which little by little I began to comprehend. It seemed a horrible sort of world, and the words suggested unspeakable things. Once or twice I felt sick and giddy—as if something awful was coming toward me in a dark room and would soon take hold of me. Occasionally the girl leaned across the table to look at my notes and see what I was putting down, and I kept pushing my chair farther and farther away from her. I hoped it would not hurt her feelings, but I could not endure her near me.
For five minutes the story went beautifully. She had run away from home when she was only sixteen—three years before; and the home had been a farm, just as it is in books. She had gone to Denver—the farm was thirty miles from Denver, but not large enough to be a ranch—and she had worked for a while in a big shop and afterward in an office. She had never learned typewriting or shorthand or expert filing, nor anything of that kind, so she folded circulars and addressed envelopes, and got five dollars a week for doing it. She said it was impossible to live on five dollars a week, and that this was the beginning of all her trouble.
After that she talked about her life in Chicago and Detroit and Buffalo and Boston and New York, and about men who had helped her and women who had robbed her, and police graft, and a great many things I had never even heard of.
For a long time I wrote as fast as my hand could write. My head seemed to be spinning round on my shoulders. I felt queerer and queerer, and more and more certain I was in a nightmare; the worst part of the nightmare was the steady husky whisper of the girl's voice—for of course she had to whisper. At moments it seemed like the hissing of a snake, and the girl looked like a snake, too, with her set straight mouth and her strange, brilliant eyes. At last, after a long time, I stopped writing and leaned back in my chair and looked at her. At the same time she stopped talking and looked back at me, and for a minute neither of us spoke. Then she bunched forward in her chair and sat staring at the floor, exactly the way she had done in the park.
"It's no go," she said, in a queer, flat voice. "You ain't gettin' it, are you?"
For a moment I did not answer her. It seemed someway that I could not. I saw by her face how she felt—sick with disappointment. She muttered some words to herself. They sounded like unpleasant words; I was glad I did not hear them clearly. She had counted on her share of the space rates for my story. She sat still for quite a long time. Once or twice she looked at me as if she did not understand why I was allowed to encumber the earth when I was so stupid. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and finally she smiled at me in a sick kind of way. I suppose she remembered that, afterall, I had given her a supper. At last she rose and picked up her hat and put it on.
"I'll blow out of here," she said. "Sorry you're out a meal for nothin'."
She turned to go, and I felt more emotions in that moment than I had ever felt before. There were dozens of them, but confusion and horror and pity seemed to be the principal ones. I asked her to wait a minute, and I went to my hand-bag and took out my purse. There was not very much in it. I had been paid on Saturday, and this was Friday, so of course I had spent most of my money. But there were six dollars left, and I gave her five of them.
"What for?" she asked, and stared at me as she had done in the park.
"For the story," I said. "On account. I'll give you the rest when it's printed."
She took the bill and stood still, looking down at it as it lay in her hand. Then suddenly she threw it on the floor.
"Aw, say," she muttered, "what's the use? It's like takin' candy from a kid. You'll need that money," she added, touching the bill with the toe of her ragged shoe as she spoke. "You'll sure need it to get back where you come from. You didn't get that story. You didn't get a word of it."
The look of the ragged shoe as she put it out and pushed the money away, and the look on her face as she spoke, made my heart turn over with pityfor her. I picked up my note-book and held it toward her.
"Didn't I get it?" I asked. "Look at this."
She took the note-book and turned the pages, at first slowly and without hope, then with interest. Finally, without raising her eyes, she sat down by the flickering candle and read them all. While she read I watched her, and as I looked I realized that there was another Watcher in the little room with us—one who stood close beside her, waiting, and who would wait only a few weeks. I knew now what her cough meant, and her husky voice, and the stain in the park, and the red spots that came and went on her thin cheeks.
When she had finished reading the notes she laid down the book and smiled at me. "Kiddin' me again, wasn't you?" she said, quietly. "You got it all here, ain't you?"
"Yes," I said. "I've got the story."
"Sure you have," she corroborated. "That Bellevue stuff's great. And take it from me, your editor will eat up the story about Holohan, with the namesan'the datesan'the places. Here's six girls will swear to what I told you. And Miss Bates, the probation officer, she'll stand for it, too. I'd have give it to a paper long ago if I'd known who to go to."
An attack of coughing stopped her words. After it she leaned against the table for a moment, exhausted. Then she bent and picked up the bill from the floor. Last of all she took my pencil outof my hand, wrote a name and address in my note-book, and laid the book back on the table.
"Me for the outer darkness," she said. "That's where I'll be. I'll stay in till four to-morrow afternoon, if your editor wants anything else."
She hesitated a moment, as if struggling with words that wouldn't come. "Thanks for the banquet," she got out, at last. "So-long."
I looked straight into her strange eyes. There were many things I wanted to say to her, but I didn't know how. I felt younger than I had ever felt before, and ignorant and tongue-tied.
"You stay here," I said. "I'll go home."
The girl's eyes looked big and round as she stared at me. She held up the five-dollar bill in her hand.
"Stay here," she gasped, "when I got money to go somewhere else? D'ye think I'm crazy?Yougot to stay an' get the rest of yer story.Iain't! See?"
I saw.
"You'll go right to that address," I asked, "and rest?"
"Sure I will," she told me, cheerfully.
"I'll bring your half of the money to you as soon as I get it," I ended. "Probably in two or three days. And I'm going to send a doctor to see you to-morrow."
She was on her way to the door as I spoke, but she stopped and looked back at me. "Say, kid,"she said, "take my advice. Don't bring the money.Sendit. Get me?"
I nodded. The door closed very softly behind her. I heard the old stairs creak once or twice as she crept down them. Then I went to the open window and leaned out. She was leaving the house, and I watched her until she turned into a side street. She walked very slowly, looking to the right and to the left and behind her, as if she felt afraid.
Two mornings later when I entered the city room of theSearchlightMr. Gibson rose and bowed low before me. Then he backed away, still bowing, and beckoning to me at the same time. His actions were mysterious, but I followed him across the room, and several reporters rose from their desks and followed us both. Near the city editor's desk Mr. Gibson stopped, made another salaam, and pointed impressively to the wall. Tacked on it very conspicuously was a "model story" of the day—the sort of thing the city editor occasionally clipped from theSearchlightor some other newspaper and hung there as "an inspiration to the staff." We were always interested in his "model stories," for they were always good; I had read some of them till I knew them by heart. But this particular morning it wasmystory which was tacked there—my story of the girl in gray!
For a full minute I could not speak. I merely stood and stared while the reporters congratulated me and joked around me. While I was still tryingto take in the stupendous fact that the "model story of the day" was really mine the city editor, Mr. Farrell, came and stood beside me. He was a fat man, with a face like a sad full moon, but he was smiling now.
"Nice story," he said, kindly. "But don't get a swelled head over it. You'll probably write a rotten one to-morrow."
I nodded. Full well I knew I probably would.
"Besides," continued Mr. Farrell, "the best thing in your story was the tip it gave us for Gibson's big beat. That was a cub reporter's luck. Thanks to it, we've got Holohan with the goods on. If you listen you'll hear him squeal. And oh, by the way," he added, as he was turning back to his desk, "we have a dozen messages already from people who want to give care and nursing and country homes to your 'girl in gray.'"
I was glad of that. Also I was interested in something else, and I mentioned it to Mr. Farrell. I told him I had felt sure my story was spoiled because I had left so much out of it. The city editor looked at me, and then jerked his head toward the story on the wall.
"It's what you left out of it," he said, "that makes that a model story."
The office door opened with a rush and shut with a bang. In the little whirlwind caused by the draught it made, the papers on our desks rose, swirled in the air, and played tag upon the floor. Everybody but me stopped work and glanced up to nod or frown at the woman who had come in. I did not stop. I knew too well who it was. There was only one person on theSearchlightwhose entrance caused that sort of commotion. Besides, I had heard the whisper of silk petticoats, and smelled the strong odor ofpeau d'Espagnewhich always preceded Miss Mollie Merk to her desk.
Mollie Merk was Mr. Hurd's most sensational woman reporter—the one who went up in air-ships and described her sensations, or purposely fell in front of trolley-cars to prove that the fenders would not work. She was what she herself called a "breezy writer," but her breeziness did not exhaust itself in her literature. She was a breezy person generally—small and thin and dark, and so full of vitality that she always arrived anywhere as if she had been projected by some violent mechanical force. Shespoke very rapidly, in short explosive sentences. She openly despised the young and made epigrams about them to show her scorn. Before I had been on theSearchlighta week she announced that I would be endurable if I had a redeeming vice; and our fellow-reporters went around quoting that remark and grinning over it. After I had written a few "big stories" her manner changed to one of open wonder, and she began to call me "the convent kid" and give me advice, addressing me as if I were an infant class. When she was in the same room with me I felt that she was mentally patting my head. I appreciated her kind heart and her value to theSearchlight; but I did not really like Mollie Merk.
Usually when she catapulted into the office she exchanged a few shouts of greeting with "the boys" and then went directly to her desk, where she dropped into her chair like a bag of ballast from a balloon, and began to write with a pen that scratched louder than any other. But to-night she followed thepeau d'Espagneacross the room to me and clapped her hand on my shoulder.
"'Lo, Iverson," she said, in her loud and breathless way. "Still on the job? 'Can' it. I'm your vesper-bell."
I felt myself instinctively drop away from her hand. In her greeting she had done two things I particularly disliked. She had called me "Iverson"—it was a vulgar habit of hers to address otherwomen by their last names—and she had spoken of something connected with my convent life, which was too sacred to be joked about. Still, I knew she meant well. I looked up at her and tried to smile, but all I could do was to drag one side of my mouth down to my chin in humble imitation of Mr. Hurd when he is talking to a member of the staff. Mollie Merk seemed to appreciate it. She roared, and her hand clapped my shoulder again.
"Cheer up, Iverson," she said. "Worst's yet to come." And she added, all in one breath, "I'm-going-to-give-a-party-for-you!"
I dropped my pen and turned in my chair to stare at her.
"Been meaning to do it right along," she jerked out. "Couldn't pull it off. To-night's my chance. Nothing to do. Fell down on my story. Hurrah! Give you a Bohemian dinner. Show you life outside the cloister. Purple pasts. Crimson presents. All the rest of it. Make your hair curl and your eyes stick out. Come on!"
Her words gave me a thrill, on which I immediately put down the stern brake of conscience. As a student of life I wanted to see and learn all I could—especially as I intended to be a nun in three years and would have no further chances. But was I justified in deliberately turning aside to seek such knowledge, when in the broad path of my daily duty I was already acquiring more than one person could understand? Also, would it be right to acceptMollie Merk's hospitality when I did not approve of her? I decided that it would not; and I tried to think of some polite and gracious way of declining her invitation, but the right words did not come. I had no social engagements, for I was still a stranger in New York, and Mollie Merk knew it; and I had not learned to tell lies with unstudied ease.
Finally an inspiration came to me. I could make an engagement and then keep it. I thanked Miss Merk and told her I intended to dine with my classmates Maudie Joyce and Kittie James. They had come to New York the day before with Kittie's sister, Mrs. George Morgan; and as they were only to stay a week, I felt that I must see all I could of them. As a matter of fact, I had dined with them the previous night, but that did not matter. I knew they would be glad to see me, even two nights in succession.
Mollie Merk was interested as soon as I spoke of them. "Classmates?" she yelped. "Two more convent kids?"
I admitted coldly that Maudie and Kittie had been graduated with me from St. Catharine's the month before.
"All right," said Mollie Merk. "Have 'em with us. Great. More convent kids the merrier. Invite their chaperon, too. I'll get Mrs. Hoppen. Hen-party of six."
I hesitated. Mrs. George Morgan would hardlyapprove of Mollie Merk, but she would find her a new type. Mrs. Morgan liked new types and strange experiences, and had seen many of them, for her husband was a wealthy Chicago man who wrote plays. Moreover, Mrs. Hoppen would be with us, and Mrs. Morgan would surely like her. Mrs. Hoppen was the city editor's star woman reporter, and very old—older even than Mollie Merk, who was at least twenty-five. Mrs. Hoppen, I had heard, was over thirty. She was rather bitter and blasé at times, but usually she had charming manners. I told Miss Merk I would get Mrs. Morgan on the telephone and ask if she and the girls could come, and within five minutes I was in theSearchlight'stelephone-booth calling up her hotel.
It was Maudie Joyce who answered, and she uttered a cry of joy when I told her of Mollie Merk's invitation. She said Mrs. Morgan had gone to bed with a sick-headache, and that she and Kittie James had been just about sick, too, over the prospect of a whole evening shut up alone in hotel rooms when so much Life was going to waste in the outer world. Then she turned from the telephone and repeated Mollie's message. I observed that she did not say anything about the dinner being Bohemian and making our eyes stick out, though I had faithfully repeated our hostess's words. Almost immediately her voice, breathless with joy, came over the wire again, telling me that she and Kittie could dine with us, and that Mrs. Morgan was very grateful to MissMerk for saving her young friends from a lonely evening.
The girls were waiting when we three reached the hotel, and my heart swelled with pride as I introduced them. Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk and I were, of course, in our office clothes, as we had not gone home to dress; but Kittie and Maudie were beautifully gowned for the evening. They were both as charming as Helleu drawings, and in the same exquisitely finished way; and their manners were so perfect that I could almost hear Mollie Merk trying to climb up to them. By the time the five of us had crowded into the taxi-cab, with the little bustle and confusion the effort caused, everybody liked everybody else. Maudie and Kittie were very proud of being with three newspaper women, and showed it; and they were so fascinated by Mollie Merk that they could not keep their eyes off her.
Of course, too, they were quivering with delight over the throngs, the noise, the brilliant electric signs, the excitement on every side, and the feeling that they were in the midst of it. Even I, though I had been in New York for a whole month and was a reporter at that, felt an occasional thrill. But as I leaned back and watched the faces of my two friends, I realized that, though we three were about the same age, in experience I was already a thousand years in advance of them. So many things had happened in the past month—things we girls at St. Catharine's had never heard of—things I could noteven mention to Kittie and Maudie. I felt that I had lost a great deal which they still retained, and I expected a deep sadness to settle upon my soul. But someway it did not.
The cab stopped at a restaurant ornamented by a huge electric sign, and we got out and walked into a marble-lined vestibule. Mollie Merk and Mrs. Hoppen led the way, and I followed them with an easy, accustomed step. To dine at a great New York restaurant was just as novel to me as it was to Maudie and Kittie, but they did not know this, and I sincerely hoped they would not find it out.
A maid took our wraps in the anteroom, and sent us in single file along a narrow hall to enter a huge room at the end of it, ablaze with electric light, and full of smoke and music and little tables with people sitting at them. All the tables were clustered close together around the four sides of the room, leaving a big square space in the center, roped off by a heavy red cord. It was empty, and I wondered what it was for. Above there was a balcony with more tables and people at them. There was laughter everywhere, some of it quite loud, and many voices were speaking in many tongues. Above it all the band at the head of the room poured forth gay music. I could hear Maudie and Kittie draw quick breaths of delight, and my own feet hardly touched the ground as we followed the head waiter to the table reserved for us.
There were bottles and glasses on most of thetables, and even the women were helping to empty them. But I knew that many good people drink wine in moderation, so I was not greatly shocked. After all, this was New York—Bohemia, a new world. We were in it, and I at least was of it. The reflection sent a thrill down my spine—the kind that goes all the way. I felt almost wicked, and strangely happy.
When we were seated at our table Mollie Merk asked if we would have cocktails. She spoke with a very casual air, and we tried to decline in the same manner, though I am sure that Maudie and Kittie felt their hair rise then and there. Even my own scalp prickled. I explained in an offhand way that we never drank anything but water, so Mollie Merk ordered some Apollinaris for us, and two cocktails "with a dash of absinthe in them" for Mrs. Hoppen and herself. For five minutes afterward Kittie and Maudie and I did not speak. We were stunned by the mere sound of that fatal word.
Mollie Merk seemed to understand our emotions, for she began to tell us about her first experience with absinthe, years ago, in Paris, when she drank a large gobletful as if it had been a glass of lemonade. She said it was the amount a Frenchman would spend an entire afternoon over, sipping it a few drops at a time at a little sidewalk table in front of some cafe; but that she gulped it down in a few swallows, and then had just enough intelligence left to get into a cab and tell thecocherto drive heraround for three hours. She said she had ordered the man to keep to the Boulevards, but that he had taken her through the Milky Way and to the places where the morning stars sang together, and that she had distinctly heard them sing. Afterward, she added, she had traveled for centuries through space, visiting the most important objects in the universe and admiring color effects, for everything was pulsing with purple and gold and amethyst lights.
As a student of Life I admired the unerring instinct with which Mollie Merk had chosen her subject when she started in to make our eyes stick out. But if this was the beginning, what would be the end? At last Maudie Joyce, who had always had the manner of a woman of the world, even when she was a school-girl, pulled herself together and asked smilingly if Miss Merk's cocktail had swept her into space this time. Mollie Merk sighed and said, alas, no; those were the joys of yesteryear, and that the most a cocktail could do for her at present was to make her forget her depression after she had received a letter from home. Then a calcium light blazed from above, making a brilliant circle on the floor inside the red ropes. The musicians struck into wild Oriental music, and two mulattoes came into the limelight and began to dance.
They were a man and a woman, very young, and in evening dress. They padded into the ring like two black panthers, the woman first, circling slowlyaround in time to the music, which was soft and rather monotonous, and the man revolving slowly after her. At first she seemed not to see him, but to be dancing by herself, for the love of it, and there was beauty in every movement she made. I forgot all about the dinner, the people, my friends and my hostess, and leaned forward, watching.
Suddenly she looked over her shoulder and discovered the man. She quickened her steps a little, and the musicians played faster, while she circled in and out, as if through the tangled growths of some dense jungle. I could almost see it springing up around her and hear the sound of animals moving near her—wild things like herself. She was very sure of herself as she writhed and twisted, and she had reason to be; for, however fast the man came toward her, she was always a little in advance of him. The music swelled into a sudden crash of sound as he gave a leap and caught her. But she dipped and slipped out of his hands and whirled away again, sometimes crouching close to the ground, sometimes revolving around him with a mocking smile. Once, as he leaped, she bent and let him go over her; again he caught her, but a second time she slipped away.
At last the violins sent forth only a queer, muted, barbaric hum, broken by a crash of cymbals as the man made his final spring and captured the woman, this time holding her fast. There was a delirious whirl of sound and motion while he held her up andperformed a kind of junglepas seulebefore he carried her away. The music grew slower and slower and finally stopped; but for an instant or two after the dancers had disappeared it seemed to me that I could still see the man bearing his burden steadily through strange tropical growths and under trees whose poisonous branches caught at him as he passed.
I turned and looked at Maudie and Kittie. They were sitting very still, with their eyes fixed on the spot where the dancers had been. I knew what they were thinking, and they knew I knew; but when they caught my glance they both began to speak at once, and eagerly, as if to reassure me. Maudie said the woman's clothes were in excellent taste, and Kittie murmured that such violent exercise must be very reducing. Kittie is extremely plump, and she loves good food so much that she is growing plumper all the time. In her interest in the dance she had forgotten her dinner, and now the waiter was taking away a portion of salmon with a delicious green sauce before she had eaten even a mouthful of it. That agonizing sight immediately diverted Kittie's mind, and I was glad.
Mollie Merk met my startled eyes and grinned. "Cheer up, Iverson!" she exclaimed. "Worst's yet to come, you know."
I managed to smile back at her. This was Life, and we were seeing it, but I began to feel that we had seen enough for an evening. I tried to remind myself again that we were in Bohemia, but underthe look in Maudie's eyes I felt my face grow hot. It was I who had brought her and Kittie here—I and my new friends. What would Sister Irmingarde think of me if she knew?
I had little time for such mournful reflections. There was a stir on the musicians' platform as all the players but one laid aside their instruments and filed out through a side door. This one, the first violin, came down on the floor and walked about among the diners, stopping at different tables. Every time he stopped, I discovered, it was to play to some particular woman who had caught his eye. He was tall and good-looking in his gipsy costume, with a wide red sash around his waist, a white-silk shirt open at the neck, short velvet trousers, and a black-velvet coat. Under his dark mustache his teeth looked very white as he smiled, and he smiled often, or sighed and made eyes at the women as he played to them.
I glanced at Kittie and Maudie. They were watching the gipsy with absorbed interest.
He must have caught Maudie's eye, for suddenly he crossed to our table and began to play to her—turning occasionally to Kittie and me for a second only, while his violin shrieked and moaned and sighed and sang in a way that made our hearts turn over. I could see by their faces, which were pink with excitement, and by their shining eyes, what emotions the moment held for my young friends, and certainly it was thrilling enough for three girlsjust out of school to have a genius playing to them alone in one of the gayest restaurants in New York.
For a few moments I was delighted with the gipsy and his music. Then I began to notice the way he looked at us, alternately half-closing and slowly opening his eyes as he put his soul into his music. He seemed to be immensely interested in Maudie, and played to her much longer than he did to any one else. Several times he came so close to her that I was afraid he would touch her.
The other musicians had returned by this time, and were playing an accompaniment to the violinist, who had swung into a Brahms waltz. When he had finished the first movement he stopped playing, tucked his violin under his arm, and held out his hand to Maudie, with his most brilliant smile. She turned first red, then white, and shrank away from him in her chair, while instinctively I, too, threw out my hands to ward him off. He turned to me and took them at once, holding them tight and trying to pull me to my feet. My heart stopped beating as I resisted his drag on my wrists, and I looked at Mollie Merk and Mrs. Hoppen, expecting them to spring up and interfere. But for a moment they both sat regarding the scene as indifferently as if they were at a play.
At last Mrs. Hoppen shook her head at the musician with her bored little smile, and he bowed and shrugged his shoulders and went off to a table somedistance away, where he began to play to another woman.
Mollie Merk leaned toward me. "Say, Iverson," she exclaimed, in a tone that must have reached the diners in the balcony, "what's up? You're as white as your copy-paper. Which is it—indigestion or cold feet?"
Her words pulled me together. It was natural that I should look pale, for by this time I was frightened—not for myself, but for Kittie and Maudie. They, I could see, though embarrassed and ill at ease, were not yet frightened. I knew why.Iwas there, and they trusted me. They were sure that nothing could harm them while I was with them. I set my teeth in the determination that nothing should.
More entertainers came into the space shut off by the red cords. Every moment the room grew closer and hotter, the smoke around us became thicker, the atmosphere of excitement increased. The faces of Kittie and Maudie began to float before me in a kind of mist. I decided that if I ever got them out into a clean world again I would have nothing left to pray for. But I knew I could not wipe the evening and its incidents from their memories, and that knowledge was the hardest thing I had to bear.
In desperation I turned from the dancers and began to watch the diners. The way these accepted the dancing and the actions of the gipsy had shownme at once what they were, and now they were becoming gayer every minute and more noisy. Some of them got up occasionally and whirled about together on the dancing-floor. Many sang accompaniments to the violins. These men and women were moths, I reflected, whirling about a lurid flame of life. There were dozens of young girls in the room—many without chaperons.
Directly opposite me two persons—a man, and a girl in a white dress—sat at a table alone, absorbed in each other. At first I glanced at them only occasionally and idly, then with growing interest and at last with horror, for I began to understand. The girl had a sweet, good face, but a brief study of the man showed me what he was. He was short and stout, with a bald head and a round, pleasure-loving face. It was not so much his appearance, however, as the way he watched the girl which betrayed him to me. He hardly took his eyes from her face. Whatever was going on in the dancing-place, he looked at her; and she, leaning a little forward in her chair, listened to him as he talked, and swayed toward him. I saw him tap her hand, which lay on the table, with his fat forefinger. The sight revolted me, but she did not draw her hand away.
As I watched her I thought of all the dreadful things I had heard and read and seen since I had been in New York, and wondered if the time would ever come when I would be old enough and wiseenough to rise and go to a girl in such a situation and ask her if she needed help. It seemed impossible that women experienced enough to do this with dignity and courage should sit around to-night, all unheeding, and let such things go on. Then looking at them again, table by table, I read the answer. They were themselves the lost and strayed—callous, indifferent, with faces and hearts hardened by the lives they had led. I began to feel sick and faint, and for a moment I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, coming toward us slowly through the crowd was Godfrey Morris, the assistant of Nestor Hurd, my chief on theSearchlight. It was plain that he had just entered, for he was looking around in search of a table. I shall never forget the feeling that came over me when I recognized him. Now that he was there, I felt absolutely safe. I had almost a vision of him picking up Maudie and Kittie and me and taking us bodily away, and the relief and gratitude I felt showed me how great my inward panic had been. I kept my eyes on him, hoping he would turn and see me, but he was looking in another direction. Still, he was drawing nearer, and I sat tight and waited in silence, though I wanted to call out to him above the uproar around us.
It did not surprise me to see the girl in white put out her hand as he passed her table and touch him on the arm. He stopped at once, looking a little surprised, and then stood for a moment beside her and the stout man, talking quietly to them both.I waited breathlessly. Now he was speaking to the man alone, probably urging him to leave the place. And then—I heard a sound as unexpected in that place as an altar-bell. Mr. Morris had thrown back his head and laughed, and as he laughed he smote the stout man heavily on the shoulder and dropped into a chair beside him. The stout man filled a glass. I saw Mr. Morris lift it, bow to the girl in white, and drink its contents.
I lived a long, long time during the next minute. I cannot describe my emotions. I only knew that in that instant life seemed unbearable and New York became a city I could not remain in any longer. Surely nothing could be right in a place where even Godfrey Morris came to resorts like this, not as a knight to the rescue of helplessness, but as a familiar patron, who was there because he enjoyed it and found congenial friends.
It was impossible to take my eyes from the horrible group at that table. I kept on staring, and, as if he felt my gaze, Mr. Morris turned around and saw me. The next instant he was on his feet, and a second after that he was shaking hands with Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk and me. Evidently, he was neither surprised to find us there nor ashamed to be found there himself. When he was presented to Kittie and Maudie his manner was exactly as it might have been if he were meeting them at an afternoon tea, and he settled down comfortably into the sixth place at our table, which Mrs. Morganhad been invited to fill, and chatted as if he had known the girls all his life.
I have no idea what he said. It did not matter. After the first few moments Maudie and Kittie were able to talk to him. I heard their voices, but not their words. I sat with my eyes on the table-cloth and my cheeks burning. I wanted to get away that minute. I wanted to go to my home, out West. Most of all, I wanted to return to the convent and never, never leave it.
The gipsy was playing among the tables again, and now he was quite near us. But I had reached the point where I was not even interested when he turned, caught sight of our new companion, and crossed quickly to our table, his hand outstretched to Mr. Morris, his face shining like an electric globe when the light has been turned on inside of it.
Mr. Morris greeted him like a long-lost brother. "Hello, Fritz!" he exclaimed, taking his hand in a most friendly grasp. "Business good? How are the kids?"
The gipsy revealed the widest smile of the evening as he answered. "Ach, Herr Morris," he cried, in a guttural German voice that simply dripped affection, "you remember dose kids? T'ree we had—abernow,nowwe got anoder one—since Tuesday!"
"Good!" cried Mr. Morris, looking around as if he expected us all to share his joy over the glad tidings. "Girl or boy?"
"Girl," the gipsy player told him. "T'ree boyswe had. Now we haf girl for change. We t'ink, my wife and I, we make her noospaper woman. Goot idea,nicht wahr?"
He laughed, and Mr. Morris laughed with him. "Fine," he declared. "Send her down to theSearchlightoffice in a week or two. We'll give her Miss Merk's job."
Everybody laughed again, Mollie Merk, of course, loudest of all. The musician bade us good night, beginning to play again at the tables. I had forgotten about Kittie and Maudie, but now I knew they had been listening, too, for I heard Kittie speak.
"Why, that gipsy isn't a gipsy at all, is he?" she gasped.
"No more than I am," Mollie Merk told her. "Wears the rig because it pays—pleases romantic girls." She grinned at us, while Mrs. Hoppen leaned forward.
"I'm afraid you hurt his feelings," she told Maudie and me, "by refusing his invitation to dance a little while ago. That was the greatest compliment he could pay you, you know."
Mr. Morris looked amused. "Did he invite them to dance?" he inquired, with interest. "Good old Fritz. He doesn't often do that, this season."
Maudie and I exchanged a long glance. "I thought—" Maudie began, and then stopped. I was glad she said no more. I looked again at the gipsy, and, as if something had been stripped from my eyes, I saw him as he was—no reckless and desperateadventurer, but a matter-of-fact German, his silk shirt rather grimy, his black hair oily, his absurd red sash and shabby velvet coat rebukes to the imagination that had pictured a wild gipsy heart beating under them.
Mr. Morris was smiling at the girl in white. Now he turned to me and nodded toward her. "That's Miss Hastings and George Brook," he said. "Have you met them yet?" I was able to shake my head. "Well, it's high time you did," were his next words. "I'll bring them over."
He rose, but I caught his arm and gasped out something that stopped him. I don't remember what I said, but I succeeded in making him understand that I did not want that particular man to meet my friends. Mr. Morris stared at me hard for a moment. Then he sat down again and looked me straight in the eyes.
"Miss Iverson," he said, quietly, "what have you against Brook? He's the foreign editor of theSearchlight, and one of the best fellows alive."
I could not speak. I was too much surprised.
"The girl he's with," Morris went on, "is Marion Hastings—Mrs. Cartwell's social secretary. She and Brook are going to be married next week."
He waited for me to reply. I muttered something about not wanting my friends to meet any one in this place. That was all I said. My self-control, my poise, had deserted me, but perhaps my burning face was more eloquent than my tongue. Mr.Morris looked from me to Maudie, and then at Kittie, and finally back at me.
"I see," he said at last, very slowly. "You three actually think you are in a den of iniquity!"
He turned to Mollie Merk and addressed her as crisply and with as much authority as if they were in theSearchlightoffice.
"How did you come to give Miss Iverson that impression?" he demanded.
Mollie Merk looked guilty. "Didn't realize she had it till within the last half-hour," she muttered.
"I see," said Morris again, in the same tone. "And then it was such fun for you that you let it go on!"
For a moment Miss Merk seemed inclined to sulk. Then she threw herself back in her chair and laughed. "Oh, well," she admitted, "'twas fun. Know what started her. Said something about showing her Life—making her eyes stick out. Adding her friends to the party changed the program. Brought 'em here instead. Seeing us drink cocktails started her panic. Harlem tango did the rest. Her imagination got busy."
I listened to her as one listens to a strange tongue in which one hears an occasional familiar word. She turned to me. "What that dance represents," she said, "is a suburbanite catching a cook. Least, that's what the inventor says."
"It's very graceful. My nieces dance it charmingly," Mrs. Hoppen added, mildly.
Mr. Morris smiled, but not as if he really wanted to. Then he turned to me. There was a beautiful, understanding look in his gray eyes.
"Do you realize what has happened, Miss Iverson?" he asked. "You've been having a bad dream. You expected something lurid, so you have seen something lurid in everything you have looked at to-night. In reality you are in one of the most eminently correct restaurants in New York. Of course it has itscabaret—most of them have, this season—but it's an extremely well-conducted and conservative one, with no objectionable features whatever. Now look around you and try to see things as they are."
He made a gesture with his hand, and I followed it slowly around the room. At most of the tables ordinary-looking couples sat contentedly munching food. A German woman near us was telling a friend how she cookedWiener Schnitzel. A tired-looking girl was doing an acrobatic dance in the ring, but it was not vulgar. It was merely foolish and dull. Three men on our left were arguing over some business question and adding up penciled columns on the table-cloth. Our wild-hearted gipsy, Fritz, was having a glass of beer with some friends off in a corner. The musicians were playing "The Rosary," and several fat women were lost in mournful memories. Not far away a waiter dropped a tray and broke some glasses, and the head waiter hastened to him and swore under his breath. That was theonly lurid thing in the room, and it was mild indeed to ears familiar with the daily conversation of Mr. Hurd and Colonel Cartwell. Everything else suddenly, unmistakably, was simple, cheerful, entirely proper, and rather commonplace.
"So much for the restaurant," remarked Mr. Morris, smiling as if he had observed my change of expression. "Now for the people. That's the editor of theArgusover there"—he pointed to a thin, blond man—"with his daughters. At the table next to them is Miss Blinn, the artist. The stout old lady who is eating too much is her mother. The chap with the white hair is the leading editorial-writer of theModern Review, and the lady opposite is his sister. Almost every one prominent in New York drops into this place at one time or another. Many worthy citizens come regularly. It's quite the thing, though dull!"
"I know," I stammered. "I know." I did know, but I was humiliated to the soul. "Please don't say any more."
It is true that I form impressions quickly. It is also true that I can change them just as quickly when I am shown that I am wrong. Mr. Morris looked at my face, from which the blood now seemed to be bursting, and took pity on me.
"All I want," he ended, "is to make you realize that you're visiting a legitimate place of amusement and that the performers are honest, hard-working people, though I think myself they're going a bit stale."
"Been doing the same thing too long," corroborated Mollie Merk. "Garroti ought to change his program. Just the same," she added, cheerfully, as she called the waiter and paid the bill, "they give you the besttable d'hôtedinner in town. If you hadn't been too scared to eat, Iverson, you'd have realized that much, anyway!"
At this, Kittie James broke into the conversation. Here was something Kittie understood, though, like myself, she had been somewhat mixed as to the place and the performers. Kittie told Mollie Merk with impassioned earnestness that the dinner was one of the best she had ever eaten, and that she would never forget the flavor of the artichoke hearts with the mushrooms on them. Mollie Merk seemed pleased and patted Kittie's hand.
"You see," she went on, addressing the others as if I were not there, "Iverson's had a pretty hard time since she struck this town. It's jolted her sense of values. Thought everything was white. Had some unpleasant experiences. Decided everything was black. Been seeing black to-night. Take another month or two," she added, kindly, turning to me, "to discover most things are merely gray."
Those were her words. It was a moment of agony for me. I had now gone down into the abyss of humiliation and struck the bottom hard. Mr. Morris spoke to me, though at first I did not hear him.
"Don't forget one thing, Miss Iverson," he said, gently. "An imagination like yours is the greatestasset a writer can have. You'll appreciate it when you begin work on your novels and plays in a year or two."
I felt a little better. I could see that Maudie and Kittie were impressed.
We drifted out into the street, toward a row of waiting taxi-cabs. There Mrs. Hoppen and Mollie Merk bade us good night, and Mr. Morris put Maudie and Kittie and me into a taxi-cab and got in after us. His manner was beautiful—serious, sympathetic, and deeply respectful. On the way to the hotel he told them what good work I was doing, and about the "model story" I had written two weeks before. I was glad he spoke of those things. I was afraid they had discovered that, after all, there were still many lessons in life I had not learned.