Part 3

“It does seem pretty hard,” said Ann. “I don't know what to say.” She had a mental picture of the unknown fair one, going in and out of the big Telephone Company's building on Dey Street, unaware of the admiring glances of this bashful admirer. “I'll bet the men she knows aren't half as nice as he is,” she said to herself.

“I happen to know that she reads your column,” said Caldwell. “I suppose there isn't any way I could get in touch with her through that?”

“If there's any legitimate way I can help,” Ann said, “I'll be glad to. But I hardly see what I can do.”

“Well, thanks awfully,” he said. “If I get a chance to meet her, will you let me come in again and tell you about it? Perhaps you would let me mention your name as a reference, in regard to my respectability I mean?”

“Surely you can give her better references than that? You see, I don't know so very much about you, Mr. Caldwell.”

“In matters like this,” he said, “I guess you're the Big Authority. And by the way, do you ever do any book reviewing? I work for Fawcett and Company, the publishers, and we'd like immensely to have your comment on some of our love stories. Can I send you some books?”

“I can't promise to review them,” said Ann, rather pleased, because this seemed to her a way to earn a little extra money. “But I'll speak to the literary editor, and we'll see.”

“Suppose I send them to your home address,” said Caldwell. “I know what a newspaper office is, if I send them here someone else might snitch them. Give me your street number, and you'll be spared the trouble of taking them home to read.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Ann. “Miss Ann Austin, 527 West 150th Street. Well, you let me know what happens about your fair lady. I wish you all sorts of luck!”

When Arthur Caldwell got outside the office, he looked down Park Row to where the great Telephone Building rose up behind the brown silhouette of St. Paul's.

“Caldwell,” he said to himself, “you're an infernal liar! But it pays! I'll figure out some way. While there's life there's dope.”

He set out for the subway, but paused again to meditate.

“Ann Austin!” he said. “By George, she's a queen.”

II

It is not the purpose of this tale to tell in detail how Arthur Caldwell laid siege to Ann Austin. He was a cautious man, and for some time he contented himself by presenting occasional reports of his progress with the damsel of the Telephone Company. Ann, in her friendly and unselfish way, was delighted to hear, a few days later, that he had met his ideal. Then, averring that he needed further counsel, Arthur persuaded her to have lunch with him one day; and Ann, convinced that the young man was in love with someone else, saw no reason why this should not be done. Perhaps it was a little odd that at their various meetings they should have talked so much of themselves, their ambitions, the books they had been reading, and so on; and so little of the Telephone lady. But surely it was strictly a matter of business that Arthur should send Miss Austin some of Fawcett's novels, for her to review in the _Planet_; and equally a professional matter that he should discuss with her her opinion of them. And then came the day when Arthur called up to say that things were going so well with the Telephone lady that he wanted Cynthia to meet her; and would she join them in St. Paul's Churchyard at half-past twelve? Ann, with just a curious little unanalyzed twinge in her heart, agreed to do so.

But when she reached the bench in the graveyard, where a bright autumn sunshine filled the clearing among those tremendous buildings, Arthur was there alone.

“Where's Alice?” said Ann, innocently--for such was the name Arthur had always given the lady of the Telephone Company.

“She couldn't come,” he said. “But I want to show you her picture.”

They sat down on the bench, and he took out of his pocket a copy of the noon edition of the _Planet_. He turned to the feature page, and displayed the little cut of Cynthia at the head of the Lovelorn column.

“There,” he said, stoutly (though his heart was tremulous within him), “there, you adorable little thing, there she is.”

It would be pleasant to linger over this scene, but, as I have just said, this is not our _denouement,_ but only an incident. Ann, shot through with delicious pangs of doubt and glory and anger, asked for explanations.

“And do you mean to say there never was any Alice, the beautiful Telephone blonde?” she said. “What a fraud you are!”

“Of course not,” he said. “You dear, delightful innocent, I just had to cook up some excuse for coming up to see you. And you can't be angry with me now, Ann, because in your own answer to Sincerity's letter you said the girl ought not to be offended. You told me to take a chance! Just think what self-control I had, that first time I came up to see you, not to blurt out the truth.” And then he tore off a scrap of margin from the newspaper and measured her finger for a ring.

III

There were happy evenings that winter, when Ann, after finishing her stint at the office, would hasten up their rendezvous at Piazza's little Italian table d'hote. Here, over the minestrone soup and the spaghetti and that strong Italian coffee that seems to have a greenish light round the edges of the liquid (and an equally greenish taste), they would discuss their plans and platitudes, just as lovers always have and always will. As for Ann, the light of a mystical benevolence shone in her as she conned her daily pile of broken hearts in the morning mail. More than ever she felt that she, who had seen the true flame upon the high altar, had a duty to all perplexed and random followers of the gleam who had gone astray in their search. Aware more keenly that the troubled appeals of “Tearful” and “Little Pal,” however absurd, were the pains of genuine heartache, she became more and more tender in her comments, and her correspondence grew apace. Now that she knew that her job need not go on forever she tried honestly to run the column with all her might. How stern she was with the flirt and the vamp and the jilt; how sympathetic with the wounded on Love's great battle-field. “Great stuff, great stuff!” Mr. Sikes would cry, in his coarse way, and complimented her on the increasing “kick” of her department. Knowing that he attributed the accelerated pulse of the Lovelorn column to mere cynicism on her part, she did not dare wear her ring in the office for fear of being joked about it. She used to think sadly that because she had made sympathy with lovers a matter of trade, she herself, now she was in love, could hope for no understanding. Although she hardly admitted it, she longed for the day when she could drop the whole thing.

One evening Arthur met her at Piazza's, radiant. He was going off on a long business trip for his publishing house, and they had promised him a substantial raise when he returned. They sat down to dinner together in the highest spirits. Arthur, in particular, was in a triumphant mood: the publishing world, it seemed, lay under his feet.

“Great news, hey?” he said. “We'll be able to get married in the spring, and you can kick out of that miserable job.”

“But, Arthur,” she said, “you know I have to take care of Mother. Don't you think it would be wiser if I went on with the work for a while, until your next raise comes? It would help a good deal, and we'd be able to put a little away for a rainy day.”

“What?” he said. “Do you think I'm going to have my wife doing that lovelorn stuff in the paper every day? It'd make me a laughing stock if it ever got out. No, _sir!_ I haven't said much about it, because I knew it couldn't be helped; but believe me, honey, that isn't the right kind of job for you. I've often wondered you didn't feel that yourself.”

Ann was a little nettled that he should put it that way. Whatever her private distaste for the Lovelorn column, it had served her well in a difficult time, and had paid the doctor's bills at home. And she knew how much honest devotion she had put into the task of trying to give helpful counsel.

“At any rate,” she said, “it was through the column that we first met.”

What evil divinity sat upon Arthur's tongue that he could not see this was the moment for a word of tenderness? But a young man flushed with his first vision of business success, the feeling that now nothing can prevent him from “making good,” is likely to be obtuse to the finer shades of intercourse.

“Of course, dear, I could see you were different from the usual sob sister of the press,” he said. “I could see you didn't really fall for that stuff. It's because I love you so, I want to get you out of that cheap, degrading sensational work. Most of those letters you get are only fakes, anyway. I think Love ought to be sacred, not used as mere circulation bait for a newspaper.”

Ann was a high-spirited girl, and this blunt criticism touched her in that vivid, quivering region of the mind where no woman stops to reason. But she made an honest attempt to be patient.

“But, Arthur,” she said; “there's nothing really cheap and degraded in trying to help others who haven't had the same advantages we have. I know a lot of the letters I print are silly and absurd, but not more so than some of the books you publish.”

“Now, listen,” he said, loftily, “we won't quarrel about this. I don't want you to go on with the job, that's all. It isn't fair to you. You may take the work seriously, and put all sorts of idealism into it, but it's not the right kind of job for a refined girl. How about the men in the office? I'll bet I know what _they_ think of it. They probably think it's a devil of a good joke, and laugh about it among themselves. Don't you think I've seen that managing editor leering at you? That sort of thing cheapens a girl among decent men. Every Lovelace in town feels he has a right to send you mash-notes, I guess.”

Ann was furious.

“Well, you're the only one I ever paid any attention to,” she said, blazing at him. “I'm sorry you think I've cheapened myself. I guess I have, by letting you interfere with my affairs.”

She slipped the ring from her finger, and thrust it at him. Arthur saw, too late, what he had done. She listened in scornful silence to his miserable attempts to console her, which were doubly handicapped by the old waiter hovering near. She was still adamant while he took her up town. The only thing she said was when she reached the door of her apartment.

“I don't want you to cheapen yourself. You needn't come any more.”

By this time Arthur also was thoroughly angry. The next morning he went away on his business trip, realizing for the first time that he who has the pass key to a human heart treads among dangerous explosives.

IV

How different the little room in the Planet office looked to Ann when she returned, with a sick heart, to her work the next morning. Everything was just the same--the geranium on its windowledge, that seemed to survive both the eddying hot air from the steampipes beneath it and the daily douche of iced drinking water; the noisily ticking inaccurate little clock; the dusty typewriter. All were the same, and there was the pile of morning letters from Love's battered henchmen. To office boy and casual reporter Ann herself seemed the usual cheerful charmer with her crisp little white collar and dark, alluring hair. Her swift, capable hands sped over the pile of letters, slitting the envelopes and sorting the outcries into some classification of her own. Outwardly nothing had altered, but everything seemed to have lost its meaning. What a desolate emptiness gaped beneath the firm routine of her daily life. She was struck by the irony of the fact that the only one in the office who seemed to notice that something was amiss was the one person whom she disliked--Mr. Sikes. He came in about something or other, and then stayed, looking at her intently.

“You look sick,” he said. “What's the matter, is the love feast getting on your nerves?”

With a queer twitching at the corners of her mouth, she forced herself to say some trifling remark. He leaned over her and put his hand on hers. She caught the strong cigarry whiff of his clothes, which sickened her.

“Too much love in the abstract,” he said, insinuatingly. “What you need is a little love in the concrete.”

If he--or any one--had spoken tenderly to her, she would have burst into tears. But the boorishness of his words was just the tonic she needed. She looked at him with flashing eyes, and was about to say: “Keep to some topic you understand.” Then she dared not say it, for now she could not run the risk of losing her job. She faced him steadily, in angry silence. He left the room, and the little green-tarnished mirror under the pigeonholes saw tears for the first time.

The irony of her position moved her cruelly when she began her task of dealing with the correspondents. Here she was, giving helpful, cheery advice, posing as all-wise in these matters, when her own love affair had come so miserably to grief. In the ill-written scrawls on scented and scalloped paper she could hear an echo of her own suffering. “Hopeless” and “Uncertain” and “Miss Eighteen” got very tender replies that day. And how she laid the lash upon “Beau Brummel” and “Disillusioned,” those self-assured young men, who had chosen that mail to contribute their views on the flirtatious and unreliable qualities of modern girls.

The bitterness of her paradoxical task became dulled as the days went on, but there were other troubles, too, to bother her. Her mother, quick and querulous to detect unhappiness, fell into one of her nervous spells, and the doctor had to be called in again. The woman-by-the-day got blood-poisoning in her arm, and could not come. The landlord gave notice of a coming raise in rent. A fat letter came from Arthur, and in a flush of passion she destroyed it unread. If it hadn't been such a fat letter, she said to herself, it wouldn't have annoyed her so to see it. But she wasn't going to wade through pages of explanation of just what he had meant. She was still cut to the quick when she remembered the cavalier and easy way in which he had scoffed at her work. And then, as time went by, she found herself moving into a new mood--no longer one of exaggerated tenderness toward her clients, but a feeling almost cynical. “They're all fools, just as I am,” she said.

One morning she found on her desk a note from the managing editor:

_Dear Miss Cupid:_

_We've made some changes in our budget, and I've been authorized to fatten your envelope $15 a week. I'm glad to do this, because the Lovelorn stuff is going big. Just keep kidding them along and everything will be fine. Maybe some day we can syndicate it. Hope this will cheer you up, don't look so blue at your friends._

_Sikes._

There had been a time when the tone and phrasing of this note might have seemed offensive, but in the numbness of despondency Ann had felt lately, it was a fine burst of rosy warmth. Thank God, she said to herself, something has broken my way at last! She wondered if she had been mistaken in Sikes, after all? Perhaps he was really a friend of hers, and she had misunderstood his odd ways.

That day at noon she went down to the cashier's department to cash a small check. There was no one in the cage, but in the adjoining compartment, behind a wall of filing cases, she could hear two girls talking. One of them said:

“I see Sikes has put through a raise for Lovelorn. Pretty soft for her, hey?”

“She'll have to give value received, I guess,” said the other. “Sikes figures if he puts that over for her, she'll fall for him. She's been stalling him for quite a while, but I suppose he's got her fixed now.”

She fled, aghast, ran down to another floor so as not to be seen, and took the elevator. Out on the street she walked mechanically along Park Row and found herself opposite St. Paul's. She wandered in and sat down on a bench. It was a chilly day, and the churchyard was nearly empty.

So this was Sikes's friendliness; and she, utterly innocent even in thought, was already the subject of vulgar office gossip. For the first time there broke in upon her, with bitter force, the knowledge that no matter how easy it may be to counsel others, few of us are wise in our own affairs.

Pitiable paradox: she, the “sympathetic adviser in matters of the heart,” had made shipwreck of her own happiness. How right Arthur had been, and how childish and mad she, to reject his just instinct. It was true: she had made use of Love for mere newspaper circulation; and now Love had died between her hands. Well, this was the end. No matter what happened, she could not go on with the job. Cold and trembling with nervousness, she returned to her desk, to finish her column for the next day.

On her typewriter lay some letters, which had come in while she was out. She opened one, and read.

_Dear Cynthia:_

_I am in great trouble, please help me. I am in love with a fellow and know he is all right and we would be very happy together. We were engaged to be married, and everything was lovely. But he objected to the work I was doing, said it was not a good job for a girl and that I ought to give it up. I knew he was right, but the way he said it made me mad. I guess I am hot-tempered and stubborn--anyway, I told him to mind his own business, and he went away. Now I am heart-broken, because I love him and I know he loves me. Tell me what to do._

_Jessie._

Ann sat looking at the cheap blue paper with the initial J gaudily embossed upon it in gilt. In the sprawling lines of unlettered handwriting she saw an exact parallel to her own unhappy rupture with Arthur. How much more clearly we can see the answer in others' tangles than in our own! Jessie, with her pathetic pretentious gilt initial, knew that she had been in the wrong, and was brave enough to want to make amends. And she--had she not been less true to Love than Jessie? Her false pride and obstinacy had brought their own punishment. Seeing the situation through Jessie's eyes, she could read her duty plain. Arthur, no doubt, was through with her forever, but she must play the game no less.

She put Jessie's letter at the head of the Lovelorn column for the next day. Under it she wrote:

_Certainly, dear Jessie, if you feel you were in the wrong, you ought to take the first step toward making up. Probably he was tactless in criticizing you, but I am sure he only did it because he had your true interest at heart. So write him a nice letter and be happy together. Your friend Cynthia hopes it will all come out all right, because she has seen other cases like this where false pride caused great suffering. If he is the right man, he will love you all the more after he gets your letter._

Ann sent up her copy to the composing room, and then going to a telephone booth she called up Fawcett and Company and asked for Mr. Caldwell.

“Mr. Caldwell's not here any longer,” said the girl.

“Serves me right,” said Ann to herself. “Can you tell me where I can find him?” she asked, wondering how it was that one so miserable could still speak in such a pleasant and apparently unconcerned tone of voice.

The Fawcett operator switched her to another wire.

“I'm sorry,” said a stenographer, “Mr. Fawcett left here about two weeks ago. He's got a job out of town--in Boston, I think. I can find out for you in the morning if you'll call again.”

“Never mind,” said Ann.

She had a horror of facing Mr. Sikes in her present wretchedness, so before she went home she wrote him a note, resigning her job, and asking permission to leave as soon as possible.

The next day she had to nerve herself to face his protests, and the friendly remarks of all the staff when the news spread. It was a hideous ordeal, but she managed to get through it smiling. But by evening she was inwardly a wreck. In her present mood, she had an instinctive longing to revisit the shabby little restaurant where she and Arthur had spent so many happy hours. She knew it would give her pain; but she felt that pain was what she needed--sharp, clean, insistent pain to ease the oppression and disgust of what she had been through. Remorse, she felt, is surgical in action: it cuts away foul tissues of the mind. She could not, without preparatory discipline, face her mother's outcry at hearing she had given up her job.

V

In the crisp blue evening air the bright front of Piazza's café shone with a warm and generous lustre. From sheer force of habit, her heart lightened a little as she climbed the stairs and entered the familiar place, where festoons of red and green paper decoration criss-crossed above the warm, soup-flavoured, tobacco-fogged room. There was a clatter of thick dishes and a clamour of talk.

“One?” said the head waiter, his wiry black hair standing erect as though in surprise.

She nodded, and followed him down the narrow aisle. There was the little table, in the corner under the stair, where they had always sat. A man was there, reading a newspaper.... Her heart felt very strange, as though it had dropped a long way below its usual place. It was Arthur, and he was smiling at her as though nothing had happened. He was getting up. . . he was shaking hands with her. . . how natural it all seemed!

Like all really great crises, it was over in a flash. She found herself sitting at the little table, taking off her gloves in the most casual fashion. Arthur was whispering outrageous things. How fine it is that everybody talks so loud in Italian table d'hôtes, and the waiters crash the dishes round so recklessly!

Arthur's talk seemed to be in two different keys, partly for the benefit of old Tonio, the waiter, and partly for her alone.

“Well, here you are! I wondered how soon you'd get here.... _Have you forgiven me, dearest?_. . . Do you want some minestrone?. . . _Why didn't you answer my letters, brownest eyes?_ . . . Yes, and some of the near-beer.. . . _Darling, it was all my fault. I wrote to tell you so. Didn't you get my letter?_”

After all, at such times there isn't much explaining done, A happy reconciliation is the magic of a moment, and no explanations are necessary. The trouble just drops away, and life begins again from the last kind thing that was said. All Ann could do was whisper:

“No, Arthur--it was I who was wrong. I--I've given up the Lovelorn.”

And then, after a sudden moisture of eye on both sides, the steaming minestrone came on in its battered leaden tureen from which the silver plating disappeared long ago, and under pretense of serving her soup Arthur stretched out his hand. She put out hers to meet it, and found the ring slipped deftly back on her finger.

“But, Arthur,” she said, presently, “I thought you were out of town.”

“I was,” he said. “I've got a new job, with King and Company in Boston. A good job, too, we can be married right away, and you don't need to worry.”

“Well, how did you happen to come here tonight? You didn't know I was going to be here. I didn't know it myself until an hour or so ago.”

“Perhaps I willed you to come, who knows?” he said, gaily. “Have you been advising lovers all this while, and didn't know that they always haunt the scenes of former felicity? I've been in town several days, and came here every night.”

He produced a copy of the _Evening Planet_ which he had been reading when she came in.

“I had a special reason for thinking you might come here to-night,” he said. “This afternoon I read your column, and I saw Jessie's letter and your answer. What you said made me think that perhaps you might be willing to forgive me.” Ann, once more safely enthroned on the shining glory of her happiness, felt that she could afford to tease him just a little.

“Ah,” she said, “so you admit that some of those letters people write me _are_ genuine, and that the answers do some good?”