Chapter 4

Harrington, who was enjoying himself, would have preferred to avoid business for a little longer and to talk as one gentleman to another on a pleasure trip. So, in response to this direct challenge, he answered with dry dignity:

“Yes. I have the honor of representing the Associated Press.”

“One of the great institutions of the country.”

This was reasonable--so reasonable, indeed, that Harrington pondered it to detect some sophistry.

“It must be in many respects an interesting calling.”

“Yes, sir; a man has to keep pretty well up to date.”

“Married or single, if I may be so bold?”

“I have a wife and a son nine years old.”

“That is as it should be. Lucky dog!”

Harrington laughed in approval of the sentiment. “Then I must assume that you are a bachelor, Mr. ----?”

“Dryden. Walter Dryden is my name. Yes, that’s the trouble.”

“She won’t have you?” hazarded the reporter, wishing to be social in his turn.

“Exactly.”

“Mrs. Harrington would not the first time I asked her.”

“I have offered myself to her six separate times, and she has thus far declined.”

Harrington paused a moment. The temptation to reveal his own astuteness, and at the same time enhance the personal flavor which the dialogue had acquired, was not to be resisted. “May I venture to ask if she is the lady with whom you exchanged a few words this forenoon at the door of the church?”

The young man turned his glance from the road toward his questioner by way of tribute to such acumen. “I see that nothing escapes your observation.”

“It is my business to notice everything and to draw my own conclusions,” said the reporter modestly.

“They are shrewdly correct in this case. Would you be surprised,” continued Dryden in a confidential tone, “if I were to inform you that I believe it lies in your power to procure me a home and happiness?”

Harrington chuckled in his secret soul. He would dissemble. “How could that possibly be?”

“I don’t mind telling you that the last time I offered myself the young lady appeared a trifle less obdurate. She shook her head, but I thought I observed signs of wavering--faint, yet appreciable. If now I could only put her under an obligation and thus convince her of my effectiveness, I am confident I could win her.”

“Your effectiveness?” queried Harrington, to whom the interview was becoming more psychologically interesting every moment.

“Yes, she considers me an unpractical person--not serious, you know. I know what you consider me,” he added with startling divergence--“a dude.”

Harrington found this searchlight on his own previous thought disconcerting. “Well, aren’t you one?” he essayed boldly.

Dryden pondered a moment. “I suppose so. I don’t wear reversible cuffs and I am disgustingly rich. I’ve shot tigers in India, lived in the Latin quarter, owned a steam yacht, climbed San Juan Hill--but I have not found a permanent niche. There are not places enough to go round for men with millions, and she calls me a rolling stone. Come, now, I’ll swap places with you. You shall own this motor and--and I’ll write the press notice on the Ward-Upton funeral.”

Harrington stiffened instinctively. He did not believe that the amazing, splendid offer was genuine. But had he felt complete faith that the young man beside him was in earnest, he would have been proof against the lure of even a touring car, for he had been touched at his most sensitive point. His artistic capacity was assailed, and his was just the nature to take proper umbrage at the imputation. More; over, though this was a minor consideration, he resented slightly the allusion to reversible cuffs. Hence the answer sprang to his lips:

“Can you not trust me to write the notice, Mr. Dryden?”

“She would like me to write it.”

“Ah, I see! Was that what she whispered to you this morning?”

Dryden hesitated. “Certainly words to that effect. Let me ask you in turn, can you not trust me? If so, the automobile is yours and----”

Harrington laughed coldly. “I’m sorry not to oblige you, Mr. Dryden. If you understood my point of view you would see that what you propose is out of the question. I was commissioned to write up the Ward-Upton obsequies, and I alone must do so.”

As he spoke they were passing at a lively gait through the picturesquely shaded main street of a small country town and were almost abreast of the only tavern of the place, which wore the appearance of having been recently remodelled and repainted to meet the demands of modern road travel.

“Your point of view? What is your point of view?”

Before Harrington had time to begin to put into speech the statement of his principles there was a sudden loud explosion beneath them like the discharge of a huge pistol, and the machine came abruptly to a stop. So unexpected and startling was the shock that the reporter sprang from the car and in his nervous annoyance at once vented the hasty conclusion at which he arrived in the words: “I see; this is a trap, and you are a modern highwayman whose stunt will make good Sunday reading in cold print.” He wore a sarcastic smile, and his sharp eyes gleamed like a ferret’s.

Dryden regarded him humorously with his steady gaze. “Gently there; it’s only a tire gone. Do you suspect me of trying to trifle with the sacred liberties of the press?”

“I certainly did, sir. It looks very much like it.”

“Then you agree that I chose a very inappropriate place for my purpose. ‘The Old Homestead’ there is furnished with a telephone, a livery-stable, and all the modern protections against highway robbery. Besides, there is a cold chicken and a bottle of choice claret in the basket with which to supplement the larder of our host of the inn. We will take luncheon while my chauffeur is placing us on an even keel again, and no time will be lost. You will even have ten minutes in which to put pen to paper while the table is being laid.”

Harrington as a nervous man was no less promptly generous in his impulses when convinced of error than he was quick to scent out a hostile plot. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Dryden. I see I was mistaken.” He thrust out a lean hand by way of amity. “Can’t I help?”

“Oh, no, thank you. My man will attend to everything.”

“You see I got the idea to begin with and then the explosion following so close upon your offer----”

“Quite so,” exclaimed Dryden. “A suspicious coincidence, I admit.” He shook the proffered fingers without a shadow of resentment. “I dare say my dust-coat and goggles give me quite the highwayman effect,” he continued jollily.

“They sort of got on my nerves, I guess.” Under the spell of his generous impulse various bits of local color flattering to his companion began to suggest themselves to Harrington for his article, and he added: “I’ll take advantage of that suggestion of yours and get to work until luncheon is ready.”

Some fifteen minutes later they were seated opposite to each other at an appetizing meal. As Dryden finished his first glass of claret, he asked:

“Did you know Richard Upton?”

“The man who was killed? Not personally. But I have read about him in the society papers.”

“Ah!” There was a deep melancholy in the intonation which caused the reporter to look at his companion a little sharply. For a moment Dryden stirred in his chair as though about to make some comment, and twisted the morsel of bread at his fingers’ ends into a small pellet. But he poured out another glass of claret for each of them and said:

“He was the salt of the earth.”

“Tell me about him. I should be glad to know. I might----”

“There’s so little to tell--it was principally charm. He was one of the most unostentatious, unselfish, high-minded, consistent men I ever knew. Completely a gentleman in the finest sense of that overworked word.”

“That’s very interesting. I should be glad----”

Dryden shook his head. “You didn’t know him well enough. It was like the delicacy of the rose--finger it and it falls to pieces. No offence to you, of course. I doubt my own ability to do him justice, well as I knew him. But you put a stopper on that--and you were right. My kind regards,” he said, draining his second glass of claret. “The laborer is worthy of his hire, the artist must not be interfered with. It was an impertinence of me to ask to do your work.”

Harrington’s eyes gleamed. “It’s pleasant to be appreciated--to have one’s point of view comprehended. It isn’t pleasant to butt in where you’re not wanted, but there’s something bigger than that involved, the----”

“Quite so; it was a cruel bribe; and many men in your shoes would not have been proof against it.”

“And you were in dead earnest, too, though for a moment I couldn’t believe it. But the point is--and that’s what I mean--that the public--gentlemen like you and ladies like the handsome one who looked daggers at me this morning--don’t realize that the world is bound to have the news on its breakfast-table and supper-table, and that when a man is in the business and knows his business and is trying to do the decent thing and the acceptable artistic thing, too, if I do say it, he is entitled to be taken seriously and--and trusted. There are incompetent men--rascals even--in my calling. What I contend is that you’d no right to assume that I wouldn’t do the inevitable thing decently merely because you saw me there. For, if you only knew it, I was saying to myself at that very moment that for a funeral it was the most tastefully handled I ever attended.”

“It is the inevitable thing; that’s just it. My manners were bad to begin to with, and later--” Dryden leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his head between his hands, scanning his eager companion.

“Don’t mention it. You see, it was a matter of pride with me. And now it’s up to me to state that if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to mention about the deceased gentleman or lady----”

Dryden sighed at the reminder, “One of the loveliest and most pure-hearted of women.”

“That shall go down,” said the reporter, mistaking the apostrophe for an answer, and he drew a note-book from his side pocket.

Dryden raised his hand by way of protest. “I was merely thinking aloud. No, we must trust you.”

Harrington bowed. He hesitated, then by way of noticing the plural allusion in the speech added: “It was your young lady’s look which wounded me the most. And she said something. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what she said? It wasn’t flattering, I’m sure of that, but it was on the tip of her tongue. I admit I’m mildly curious as to what it was.”

Dryden reflected a moment. “You’ve written your article?” he asked, indicating the note-book.

“It’s all mapped out in my mind, and I’ve finished the introduction.”

“I won’t ask to see it because we trust you. But I’ll make a compact with you.” Dryden held out a cigar to his adversary and proceeded to light one for himself. “Supposing what the lady said referred to something which you have written there, would you agree to cut it out?”

Harrington looked gravely knowing. “You think you can tell what I have written?” he asked, tapping his note-book.

Dryden took a puff. “Very possibly not. I am merely supposing. But in case the substance of her criticism--for she did criticise--should prove to be almost word for word identical with something in your handwriting--would you agree?”

Harrington shrugged his shoulders. “Against the automobile as a stake, if it proves not to be?” he inquired by way of expressing his incredulity.

“Gladly.”

“Let it be rather against another luncheon with you as agreeable as this.”

“Done. I will write her exact language here on this piece of paper and then we will exchange copy.”

Harrington sat pleasantly amused, yet puzzled, while Dryden wrote and folded the paper. Then he proffered his note-book with nervous alacrity. “Read aloud until you come to the place,” he said jauntily.

Dryden scanned for a moment the memoranda, then looked up. “It is all here at the beginning, just as she prophesied,” he said, with a promptness which was almost radiant, and he read as follows: “The dual funeral of Miss Josephine Ward, the leading society girl, and Richard Upton, the well-known club man, took place this morning at--” He paused and said: “Read now what you have there.”

Harrington flushed, then scowled, but from perplexity. He was seeking enlightenment before he proceeded further, so he unfolded the paper with a deliberation unusual to him, which afforded time to Dryden to remark with clear precision:

“Those were her very words.”

Harrington read aloud: “‘Look at that man; he is taking notes. Oh, he will describe them in his newspaper as a leading society girl and a well-known club man, and they will turn in their graves. If you love me, stop it.’”

There was a brief pause. The reporter pondered, visibly chagrined and disappointed. The silence was broken by Dryden. “Do you not understand?” he inquired.

“Frankly, I do not altogether. I--I thought they’d like it.”

“Of course you did, my dear fellow; there’s the ghastly humor of it; the dire tragedy, rather.” As he spoke he struck his closed hand gently but firmly on the table, and regarded the reporter with the compressed lips of one who is about to vent a long pent-up grievance.

“He was in four clubs; I looked him up,” Harrington still protested in dazed condition.

“And they seemed to you his chief title to distinction? You thought they did him honor? He would have writhed in his grave, as Miss Mayberry said. Like it? When the cheap jack or the social climber dies, he may like it, but not the gentleman or lady. Leading society girl? Why, every shop-girl who commits suicide is immortalized in the daily press as ‘a leading society girl,’ and every deceased Tom, Dick, or Harry has become a ‘well-known club man.’ It has added a new terror to death. Thank God, my friends will be spared!”

Harrington felt of his chin. “You object to the promiscuity of it, so to speak. It’s because everybody is included?”

“No, man, to the fundamental indignity of it. To the baseness of the metal which the press glories in using for a social crown.”

Harrington drew himself up a little. “If the press does it, it’s because most people like it and regard it as a tribute.”

“Ah! But my friends do not. You spoke just now of your point of view. This is ours. Think it over, Mr. Harrington, and you will realize that there is something in it.” He sat back in his chair with the air of a man who has pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat and is well content.

Harrington meditated a moment. “However that be, one thing is certain--it has got to come out. It will come out. You may rest assured of that, Mr. Dryden.” So saying he reached for his note-book and proceeded to run a pencil through the abnoxious paragraph.

“You have won your bet and--and the young lady, too, Sir Knight, I trust. You seem to have found your niche.” Which goes to prove that the reporter was a magnanimous fellow at heart.

Dryden forbore to commit himself as to the condition of his hopes as he thanked his late adversary for this expression of good-will. Ten minutes later they were sitting in the rehabilitated motor-car and speeding rapidly toward New York. When they reached the city Dryden insisted on leaving the reporter at his doorsteps, a courtesy which went straight to Harrington’s heart, for, as he expected would be the case, his wife and son Tesla were looking out of the window at the moment of his arrival and saw him dash up to the curbstone. His sturdy urchin ran out forthwith to inspect the mysteries of the huge machine. As it vanished down the street Harrington put an arm round Tesla and went to meet the wife of his bosom.

“Who is your new friend, Paul?” she asked.

It rose to Harrington’s lips to say--an hour before he would have said confidently--“a well-known club man”; but he swallowed the phrase before it was uttered and answered thoughtfully:

“It was one of the funeral guests, who gave me a lift in his motor, and has taught me a thing or two about modern journalism on the way up. I got stung.”

“I thought you knew everything there is to know about that,” remarked Mrs. Harrington with the fidelity of a true spouse.

To this her husband at the moment made no response. When, six months later, however, he received an invitation to the wedding of Walter Dryden and Miss Florence Mayberry, he remarked in her presence, as he sharpened his pencil for the occasion: “Those swells have trusted me to write it up after all.”

THE ROMANCE OF A SOUL

When Marion Willis became a schoolmistress in the Glendale public school at twenty-two she regarded her employment as a transient occupation, to be terminated presently by marriage. She possessed an imaginative temperament, and one of her favorite and most satisfying habits was to evoke from the realm of the future a proper hero, shining with zeal and virtue like Sir Galahad, in whose arms she would picture herself living happily ever after a sweet courtship, punctuated by due maidenly hesitation. This fondness for letting her fancy run riot and evolve visions splendid with happenings for her own advancement and gladness was not confined to matrimonial day-dreams. On the morning when she entered the school-house door for the first time the eyes of her mind saw the curtain which veils the years divide, and she beheld herself a famous educator, still young, but long since graduated from primary teaching. She forgot the vision of her Sir Galahad there. Nor were the circumstances of her several day-dreams necessarily consistent in other respects. It sufficed for her spiritual exaltation that they should be merely a fairy-like manifestation in her own favor. But though she loved to give her imagination rein, the fairy-like quality of these visions was patent to Miss Willis, for she possessed a quiet sense of humor as a sort of east-wind supplementary to the sentimental and poetic properties of her nature. She had a way of poking fun at herself, which, when exercised, sent the elfin figures scattering with a celerity suggestive of the departure of her own pupils at the tinkle of the bell for dismissal. Then she was left alone with her humor and her New England conscience, that stern adjuster of real values and enemy of spiritual dissipation. This same conscience was a vigilant monitor in the matter of her school-teaching, despite Miss Willis’s reasonable hope that Sir Galahad would claim her soon. The hope would have been reasonable in the case of any one of her sex, for every woman is said to be given at least one opportunity to become a wife; but in the case of Miss Willis nature had been more than commonly bounteous. She was not a beauty, but she was sweet and fresh-looking, with clear, honest eyes, and a cheery, gracious manner such as is apt to captivate discerning men. She was one of those wholesome spirits, earnest and refined, yet prone to laughter, which do not remain long unmated in the ordinary course of human experience. But her conscience did not permit her to dwell on this advantage to the detriment of her scholars.

Miss Willis lived at home with her mother. They owned their small house. The other expenses were defrayed from the daughter’s salary; hence strict economy was obligatory, and the expenditure of every five-dollar bill was a matter of moment. Miss Willis’s father had died when she was a baby. The meagre sum of money which he left had sufficed to keep his widow and only child from want until Marion’s majority. All had been spent except the house; but, as Miss Willis now proudly reflected, she had become a breadwinner, and her mother’s declining years were shielded from poverty. They would be able to manage famously until Sir Galahad arrived, and when he came one of the joys of her surrender would be that her mother’s old age would be brightened by a few luxuries.

Glendale, as its name denotes, had been a rustic village. When Miss Willis was engaged (to teach school, not to be married) it was a thriving, bustling, overgrown, manufacturing town already yearning to become a city. By the end of another five years Glendale had realized its ambition, and Miss Willis was still a teacher in its crowded grammar-school. How the years creep, yet how they fly, when one is busy with regular, routine employment! The days are such a repetition of each other that they sometimes seem very long, but when one pauses and looks back one starts at the accumulation of departed time, and deplores the swiftness of the seasons.

Five years had but slightly dimmed the freshness of Miss Willis’s charms. She was as comely as ever. She was a trifle stouter, a trifle less girlish in manner, and only a trifle--what shall we call it?--wilted in appearance. The close atmosphere of a school-room is not conducive to rosiness of complexion; and the constant strain of guiding over forty immature minds in the paths of knowledge will weigh upon the flesh, though the soul be patient and the heart light. Miss Willis’s class comprised the children whose average age was twelve to thirteen--those who had been in the school three years. There were both boys and girls, and they remained with her a year. She had begun with the youngest children, but promotion had presently established her in this position.

Forty immature minds--minds just groping on the threshold of life--to be watched, shaped, and helped for ten months, and their individual needs treated with sympathy and patience. For ten months--the school term,--then to be exchanged for a new batch, and so from year to year. Glendale’s manufacturing population included several nationalities, so that the little army of scholars which sat under Miss Willis’s eye included Poles, Italians, negroes, and now and then a youthful Chinaman, as well as the sons and daughters of the merchant, the tailor, the butcher, and baker, and other citizens whose title as Americans was of older date. It was not easy to keep the atmosphere of such a school-room wholesome, for the apparel of the poorest children, though often well darned, was not always clean, and the ventilating apparatus represented a political job. But it was Miss Willis’s pride that she knew the identity of every one of her boys and girls, and carried it by force of love and will written on her brain as well as on the desk-tablets which she kept as a safeguard against possible lapses of memory. She loved her classes, and it was a grief to her at first to be obliged to pass them on at the end of the school year. But habit reconciles us to the inevitable, and she presently learned to steel her heart against a too sensitive point of view in this respect, and to supplement the bleeding ties thus rudely severed with a fresh set without crying her eyes out. Yet though faithful teachers are thus schooled to forget, they rarely do, and Miss Willis found herself keeping track, in her mind’s eye, of her little favorites--some of them youthful reprobates--in their progress up the ladder of knowledge and out into the world.