CHAPTER XIV

THE SKIES FALL

Before morning words began coming to her--gradually. First she moaned, then muttered, then raged. The chill disappeared and fever came on. By daybreak, however, they had both been left with the things that were, and mother slipped into her kimono.

"Go bring me the morning paper," she condescended, after the passing of the creamery wagon announced that busy life was still going on.

I rushed out into the front yard. The tree-tops were misty with that white fog which looks as if darkness were trailing her nightrobe behind her; and already on the neighboring lawns the automatic sprinklers were caroming across the green as if they had St. Vitus' dance.

"On a day like this _nothing_ is too good to be true!" I decided, as I picked up the paper and scurried back into the house.

"And got _your_ name to it--Grace Chalmers Christie!" mother wailed in despair, as she opened the sheet and saw two columns, broken by a face that could do much more sensible things than "launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Ilium."

"Let's--see," I suggested, peering over her shoulder and watching the words dancing up and down on either side of this face. I couldn't read anything, but I managed to catch an occasional "Macdermott" as it pranced along in front of an occasional "model cottage."

"Take it!--Burn it!" mother commanded, after she had read enough to realize that the thing was entirely too dull to prove interesting to any feminine creature.

She thrust it into my hand, and I took it into my bedroom, where I began a frenzied search for the scissors.

"I'd rather have you by yourself--away from all suggestions of Macdermotts and enlarged traction companies," I whispered, snipping the picture from the page and laying it caressingly in the drawer of the old-fashioned desk.

There it lay all morning--and I whispered to it and caressed it.

"A picture in a drawer is worth two on the wall," I said once, as I pushed it away quickly to keep mother from seeing it. But the fun of the secret was not at all times uppermost.

"You are so beautiful--so beautiful," I wailed, as I looked at it another time. "I almost wish you were not--so beautiful."

For you must know that no woman in love ever _enjoys_ her man's good looks! She loves him for so many other things besides beauty that she feels this demand is a needless cruelty--adding to her torture and making her love him the more. The only male beauty she can ungrudgingly adore is that which she cradles in her arms--the miniature of the Big Good Looks which have lured her and tormented her!

Then--just for the sake of keeping away from this drawer--I did different things to pass away the morning. I said good-by to the picture, then went into the library and looked up a word in the dictionary. I looked at the picture again after that--to make sure that it was still there--then I decided to wash my hair. But I changed my mind, for I was afraid the water might drip on the picture and ruin it. I looked up a bodkin and some blue baby ribbon--and forgot to gear up the corset-cover whose eyelets were gaping hungrily before my eyes. While I was trying to remember what one usually does with a bodkin and blue ribbon I looked at the picture again--and, well, if you have ever been there you can understand; and if you haven't no words could ever explain.

Then the telephone in the hall! I tried to keep away from it as hard as they say a murderer tries to keep away from the scene of his crime.

"I won't call him until afternoon," I kept telling myself. "It would be perfectly outrageous. I'll call him from the office--just about dusk, and----"

Then I began seeing things again--houses and English gardens, with children and schoolhouses in the background, and a smile on the face of Pope Gregory, the Somethingth, when he saw the Union Jack and Old Glory flying in peace above this vision--until I came to the office in time for the one o'clock staff meeting.

The first thing I saw there was a note lying on my desk. It bore no post-mark, so I knew that it must have come by messenger.

"What can he have said?" I thought, catching it up and weighing it in my hands. "And I wonder why he sent it here to the _Herald_ office, instead of out home--and why he addressed it to Miss G. C. Christie, as if it were a business communication instead of to Miss Grace Chalmers Christie, and why----"

I looked at it again. It was surely from him, for it was written on traction company paper. I was glad of this, for I can forgive a man for anything--if he doesn't use fancy note-paper with his monogram in the corner.

I weighed it, and turned it over several times, and found a vague "Habana" fragrance about it--before I ran a hairpin under the flap and opened it. It ran as follows:

"My dear Miss Christie--

"I have no doubt that you already know every man to be an Achilles--who welds a heel protector out of his egotism. Now, it happens that my most vulnerable spot is a distaste to being made a fool of; and to-day I can realize what a heavy coating of self-importance lay over this spot yesterday to blind me to your real motive.

"My apology for being such an easy-mark is that it was a case of mistaken identity. I want you to know that, as an actress, you are amazing! I firmly believed that an unusually fair and charming woman was doing me a great honor--but I awoke this morning from my trance to find that a clever newspaper reporter had outwitted me.

"I understand now why American Woman must be kept as a tormenting side-issue in a man's busy life. He can't afford to let her come to the front or she throws dust in his eyes.

"Of course the words I said to the vision of my own fancy and the promises I exacted, do not hold good with the reporter. I am leaving Oldburgh at noon to-day, and even if I were not, you would not care to see me again, since I know nothing more that would serve as a front-page article for the _Herald_."

"Very sincerely yours, "MAITLAND TAIT."

Now, do you know what happens when a woman receives such a letter as this--a letter that starts seismic disturbances? Well, first she blames her eyesight. She thinks she hasn't read the thing aright! Then she carries it off into some dark corner where she hopes she can see better, for the strong glare of day seems to make matters worse. If there's an attic near, so much the better!

But there was no available attic to the _Herald_ office, so I walked into the society editor's private room and slammed the door. I had thrust the note into my blouse, so that I'd have a little breathing-spell while I was getting it out, and as I tugged with a contrary belt pin I breathed very hard and fast.

But the second reading disclosed few details that had not been sent over the wires at the first report. Likewise the third, fourth and fifth. After that I lost count, and when I regained consciousness there was a heavy knock at the door--a knock in the possessive case. I rose wearily and admitted the rightful owner.

"Say, Grace," she commenced excitedly, "the old man's asking for you--Captain Macauley! He wants you to come down to his den at once for an interview. How does it feel to be the biggest thing on the _Herald_--for a day?"

I put my hand up to my forehead.

"It feels like----"

She laughed.

"Then try to look like it," she suggested. "Why, you look positively seasick to-day."

I didn't stop to explain my bearing false witness, but dashed past her to the head of the stairs. Captain Macauley's office was on a lower floor, and by the time I had gone leisurely down the steps I had quieted my eyelids somewhat.

"Well, Grace--how about the illegitimate use of weapons?" the old man laughed, lifting his shaggy head from the front page of the day's _Herald_, as I entered. "Sit down! Sit down--I want to talk with you."

But for a moment he failed to talk. He looked me over quizzically, then turned to his desk and drew a yellow envelope from a pigeonhole. It was a telegram. I opened it wonderingly.

"Pauline Calhoun met with a serious motor-car accident yesterday and will be compelled to cancel her contract with you." I read. I looked at the old man.

"To go abroad this summer for the _Herald_?" I asked.

He nodded.

"We've _advertised_ her going," he said mournfully. "And the transportation is here."

"She was to have sailed Saturday week?" I asked, wondering at the cunning machinery of my own brain, which could keep on working after it was cold and dead! Every inch of my body was paralyzed.

"On the _Luxuria_," he said cheeringly, as he saw my expression. "The _Luxuria_, mind you, young lady!"

"And to miss it? How tragic!" I kept on absently, wishing that the whole Cunard Line was at the bottom of the sea if he meant to keep me there chattering about it all day.

"But it's tragic for the _Herald_," he snapped. "Don't you see we're up against it? Here, every paper in the South is doing stunts like this--getting out special stuff with its individual brand--and Pauline Calhoun can deliver the goods."

"Not with her arm broken," I mused aloud.

He looked at me impatiently.

"The thing is, we've got to send _somebody_ abroad next week--somebody whose leg is not broken!"

"Oh!"

"And Hudson and I have been discussing you. This job you roped in last night was more than we'd given you credit for, and--so--well, can't you speak?"

I couldn't speak, but I could laugh. I felt as if my fairy godmother had taken me to a moving-picture show--where one scene was from Dante's _Inferno_ and the next one was from a novel by the Duchess.

"There'd be Italy----" Captain Macauley began, but I shrank back.

"Not Italy!" I begged. "I couldn't go to Italy now."

"Why?"

"Because you'd want me to write a lot of sentimental stuff from there--and I'm not sentimental--now."

He smiled.

"Italy is the land of lovers," he whispered, his eyes twinkling over some 1870 recollection. "You must be in love with _somebody_ when you're in Italy--and you can no more hide it than you can hide nettle-rash."

"I don't want to go there," I said stiffly.

"Well, you wouldn't have to!" he answered readily. "This steamer ticket reads from New York to Liverpool."

"Liverpool?" I repeated, as blankly as if geography hadn't been my favorite book at school--to eat apples behind.

"And Hudson suggested, since you showed last night that you were keen on getting the news of the hour, that you'd likely succeed in a new line in England. We've been surfeited on Westminster Abbey and the lakes, so we want _news_! Coal strikes and suffragettes--and other curses!"

"News?"

"Instead of mooning around Hampstead Heath listening to the newest scandal about George Romney and his lady friend, stay strictly in the twentieth century and get in line with the militants. Describe how they address crowds from cart-tails."

"I see," I said slowly.

But in my attempts to see I think I must have passed my left hand across my forehead. At all events, he caught sight of its ringless state.

"Grace!" he exclaimed, catching my fingers roughly and scrutinizing the little pallid circle left by the ring's long contact--sometimes the healthiest, sometimes the deadliest pallor that female flesh is heir to! "Does this mean that you've broken off with Guilford Blake?"

"Yes."

His face grew grave.

"Then, child, I beg your pardon for talking so glibly about your going away!--I didn't know."

"But it isn't that--it's not that I'm worrying over now," I explained forlornly. "And Guilford's not hurt! Please don't waste sympathy on him. He'll be glad, when the first shock gets over, for I've tormented him unmercifully."

"Then--what is it?" he asked, very gently.

I drew away my hand.

"It's--something _else_! And please don't change your mind about sending me abroad! I'd like very much to go away from here. Anywhere except to Italy."

He reached over and patted my bereft hand affectionately.

"So the something else is the same sort of something, after all?"

"Perhaps."

"Then run along and begin getting ready," he said. "Get clothes in your head--and salt-sprayed decks on moonlight nights, and wild adventures."

I smiled.

"That's right! Smile! I _can't_ send out a representative with a broken leg--and I'd prefer not sending out one with a broken heart."

I turned away then, struggling fiercely with something in my throat, but just for an instant.

"Broken heart!" I repeated scornfully. "It's not that bad. You mustn't think I'm such a fool."

"Well," he said briskly, "whatever it is, cut it out! And, believe me, my dear, a steamer trunk is the best possible grave for unrequited love."