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.
[Illustration: "Well, can't you speak?"]
"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."