The drizzle and mist blew in under the top of the cut-under as they
drove rapidly into town, and bright little drops sparkled on the fair
hair above the new editor's forehead and on the long lashes above the
new editor's cheeks.
She shook these transient gems off lightly, as she paused in the doorway
of the office at the top of the rickety stairway. Mr. Schofield had just
added the last touch to his decorations and managed to slide into
his coat as the party came up the stairs, and now, perspiring, proud,
embarrassed, he assumed an attitude at once deprecatory of his endeavors
and pointedly expectant of commendation for the results. (He was a
modest youth and a conscious; after his first sight of her, as she stood
in the doorway, it was several days before he could lift his distressed
eyes under her glance, or, indeed, dare to avail himself of more than
a hasty and fluttering stare at her when her back was turned.) As she
entered the room, he sidled along the wall and laughed sheepishly at
nothing.
Every chair in the room was ornamented with one of his blue rosettes,
tied carefully (and firmly) to the middle slat of each chair-back. There
had been several yards of ribbon left over, and there was a hard knot
of glossy satin on each of the ink-stands and on the door-knobs; a
blue band, passing around the stovepipe, imparted an antique rakishness
suggestive of the charioteer; and a number of streamers, suspended from
a hook in the ceiling, encouraged a supposition that the employees
of the “Herald” contemplated the intricate festivities of May Day. It
needed no genius to infer that these garnitures had not embellished the
editorial chamber during Mr. Harkless's activity, but, on the contrary,
had been put in place that very morning. Mr. Fisbee had not known of
the decorations, and, as his glance fell upon them, a faint look of pain
passed over his brow; but the girl examined the room with a dancing eye,
and there were both tears and laughter in her heart.
“How beautiful!” she cried. “How beautiful!” She crossed the room and
gave her hand to Ross. “It is Mr. Schofield, isn't it? The ribbons are
delightful. I didn't know Mr. Harkless's room was so pretty.”
Ross looked out of the window and laughed as he took her hand (which he
shook with a long up and down motion), but he was set at better ease
by her apparent unrecognition of the fact that the decorations were for
her. “Oh, it ain't much, I reckon,” he replied, and continued to look
out of the window and laugh.
She went to the desk and removed her gloves and laid her rain-coat over
a chair near by. “Is this Mr. Harkless's chair?” she asked, and, Fisbee
answering that it was, she looked gravely at it for a moment, passed her
hand gently over the back of it, and then, throwing the rain-cloak over
another chair, said cheerily:
“Do you know, I think the first thing for us to do will be to dust
everything very carefully.”
“You remember I was confident she would know precisely where to begin?”
was Fisbee's earnest whisper in the willing ear of the long foreman.
“Not an instant's indecision, was there?”
“No, siree!” replied the other; and, as he went down to the press-room
to hunt for a feather-duster which he thought might be found there,
he collared Bud Tipworthy, who, not admitted to the conclave of his
superiors, was whistling on the rainy stairway. “You hustle and find
that dust brush we used to have. Bud,” said Parker. And presently, as
they rummaged in the nooks and crannies about the machinery, he melted
to his small assistant. “The paper is saved, Buddie--saved by an angel
in light brown. You can tell it by the look of her.”
“Gee!” said Bud.
Mr. Schofield had come, blushing, to join them. “Say, Cale, did you
notice the color of her eyes?”
“Yes; they're gray.”
“I thought so, too, show day, and at Kedge Halloway's lecture; but, say,
Cale, they're kind of changeable. When she come in upstairs with you and
Fisbee, they were jest as blue!--near matched the color of our ribbons.”
“Gee!” repeated Mr. Tipworthy.
When the editorial chamber had been made so Beat that it almost
glowed--though it could never be expected to shine as did Fisbee and
Caleb Parker and Ross Schofield that morning--the editor took her seat
at the desk and looked over the few items the gentlemen had already
compiled for her perusal. Mr. Parker explained many technicalities
peculiar to the Carlow “Herald,” translated some phrases of the
printing-room, and enabled her to grasp the amount of matter needed to
fill the morrow's issue.
When Parker finished, the three incompetents sat watching the little
figure with the expression of hopeful and trusting terriers. She knit
her brow for a second--but she did not betray an instant's indecision.
“I think we should have regular market reports,” she announced,
thoughtfully. “I am sure Mr. Harkless would approve. Don't you think he
would?” She turned to Parker.
“Market reports!” Mr. Fisbee exclaimed. “I should never have thought of
market reports, nor, do I imagine, would either of my--my associates. A
woman to conceive the idea of market reports!”
The editor blushed. “Why, who would, dear, if not a woman, or a
speculator, and I'm not a speculator; and neither are you, and that's
the reason you didn't think of them. So, Mr. Parker, as there is so much
pressure, and if you don't mind continuing to act as reporter as well as
compositor until after to-morrow, and if it isn't too wet--you must take
an umbrella--would it be too much bother if you went around to all the
shops--_stores_, I mean--to all the grocers', and the butchers', and
that leather place we passed, the tannery?--and if there's one of those
places where they bring cows, would it be too much to ask you to
stop there?--and at the flour-mill, if it isn't too far?--and at the
dry-goods store? And you must take a blank-book and sharpened pencil,
And will you price everything, please, and jot down how much things
are?”
Orders received, the impetuous Parker was departing on the instant, when
she stopped him with a little cry: “But you haven't any umbrella!”
And she forced her own, a slender wand, upon him; it bore a cunningly
wrought handle and its fabric was of glistening silk. The foreman,
unable to decline it, thanked her awkwardly, and, as she turned to
speak to Fisbee, bolted out of the door and ran down the steps without
unfolding the umbrella; and as he made for Mr. Martin's emporium, he
buttoned it securely under his long “Prince Albert,” determined that
not a drop of water should touch and ruin so delicate a thing. Thus he
carried it, triumphantly dry, through the course of his reportings of
that day.
When he had gone the editor laid her hand on Fisbee's arm. “Dear,” she
said, “do you think you would take cold if you went over to the
hotel and made a note of all the arrivals for the last week--and the
departures, too? I noticed that Mr. Harkless always filled two or
three--sticks, isn't it?--with them and things about them, and somehow
it 'read' very nicely. You must ask the landlord all about them; and, if
there aren't any, we can take up the same amount of space lamenting
the dull times, just as he used to. You see I've read the 'Herald'
faithfully; isn't it a good thing I always subscribed for it?” She
patted Fisbee's cheek, and laughed gaily into his mild, vague old eyes.
“It won't be this scramble to 'fill up' much longer. I have plans,
gentlemen,” she cried, “and before long we will print news. And we must
buy 'plate matter' instead of 'patent insides'; and I had a talk with
the Associated Press people in Rouen--but that's for afterwhile. And I
went to the hospital this morning before I left. They wouldn't let me
see him again, but they told me all about him, and he's better; and I
got Tom to go to the jail--he was so mystified, he doesn't know what I
wanted it for--and he saw some of those beasts, and I can do a column of
description besides an editorial about them, and I will be fierce enough
to suit Carlow, you may believe that. And I've been talking to Senator
Burns--that is, listening to Senator Burns, which is much stupider--and
I think I can do an article on national politics. I'm not very well up
on local issues yet, but I--” She broke off suddenly. “There! I think we
can get out to-morrow's number without any trouble. By the time you get
back from the hotel, father, I'll have half my stuff written--'written
up,' I mean. Take your big umbrella and go, dear, and please ask at the
express office if my typewriter has come.”
She laughed again with sheer delight, like a child, and ran to the
corner and got the cotton umbrella and placed it in the old man's hand.
As he reached the door, she called after him: “Wait!” and went to him
and knelt before him, and, with the humblest, proudest grace in the
world, turned up his trousers to keep them from the mud. Ross Schofield
had never considered Mr. Fisbee a particularly sacred sort of person,
but he did from that moment. The old man made some timid protest, at his
daughter's action, But she answered; “The great ladies used to buckle
the Chevalier Bayard's spurs for him, and you're a great deal nicer than
the Chev----_You haven't any rubbers_! I don't believe _any_ of you have
any rubbers!” And not until both Fisbee and Mr. Schofield had promised
to purchase overshoes at once, and in the meantime not to step in any
puddles, would she let her father depart upon his errand. He crossed
the Square with the strangest, jauntiest step ever seen in Plattville.
Solomon Tibbs had a warm argument with Miss Selina as to his identity.
Miss Selina maintaining that the figure under the big umbrella--only
the legs and coat-tails were visible to them--was that of a stranger,
probably an Englishman.
In the “Herald” office the editor turned, smiling, to the paper's
remaining vassal. “Mr. Schofield, I heard some talk in Rouen of an oil
company that had been formed to prospect for kerosene in Carlow County.
Do you know anything about it?”
Ross, surfeited with honor, terror, and possessed by a sweet distress
at finding himself tete-a-tete with the lady, looked at the wall and
replied:
“Oh, it's that Eph Watts's foolishness.”
“Do you know if they have begun to dig for it yet?”
“Ma'am?” said Ross.
“Have they begun the diggings yet?”
“No, ma'am; I think not. They've got a contrapshun fixed up about three
mile south. I don't reckon they've begun yet, hardly; they're gittin'
the machinery in place. I heard Eph say they'd begin to bore--_dig_, I
mean, ma'am, I meant to say dig----” He stopped, utterly confused
and unhappy; and she understood his manly purpose, and knew him for a
gentleman whom she liked.
“You mustn't be too much surprised,” she said; “but in spite of my
ignorance about such things, I mean to devote a good deal of space to
the oil company; it may come to be of great importance to Carlow. We
won't go into it in to-morrow's paper, beyond an item or so; but do you
think you could possibly find Mr. Watts and ask him for some information
as to their progress, and if it would be too much trouble for him to
call here some time to-morrow afternoon, or the day after? I want him to
give me an interview if he will. Tell him, please, he will very greatly
oblige us.”
“Oh, he'll come all right,” answered her companion, quickly. “I'll
take Tibbs's buggy and go down there right off. Eph won't lose no time
gittin' _here_!” And with this encouraging assurance he was flying
forth, when he, like the others, was detained by her solicitous care.
She was a born mother. He protested that in the buggy he would be
perfectly sheltered; besides, there wasn't another umbrella about the
place; he _liked_ to get wet, anyway; had always loved rain. The end
of it was that he went away in a sort of tremor, wearing her rain-cloak
over his shoulders, which garment, as it covered its owner completely
when she wore it, hung almost to his knees. He darted around a corner;
and there, breathing deeply, tenderly removed it; then, borrowing paper
and cord at a neighboring store, wrapped it neatly, and stole back to
the printing-office on the ground floor of the “Herald” building, and
left the package in charge of Bud Tipworthy, mysteriously charging him
to care for it as for his own life, and not to open it, but if the lady
so much as set one foot out of doors before his return, to hand it to
her with the message: “He borrowed another off J. Hankins.”
Left alone, the lady went to the desk and stood for a time looking
gravely at Harkless's chair. She touched it gently, as she had touched
it once before that morning, and then she spoke to it as if he were
sitting there, and as she would not have spoken, had he been sitting
there.
“You didn't want gratitude, did you?” she whispered, with sad lips.
Soon she smiled at the blue ribbons, patted the chair gaily on the back,
and, seizing upon pencil and pad, dashed into her work with rare energy.
She bent low over the desk, her pencil moving rapidly, and, except for
a momentary interruption from Mr. Tipworthy, she seemed not to pause for
breath; certainly her pencil did not. She had covered many sheets when
her father returned; and, as he came in softly, not to disturb her, she
was so deeply engrossed she did not hear him; nor did she look up when
Parker entered, but pursued the formulation of her fast-flying ideas
with the same single purpose and abandon; so the two men sat and waited
while their chieftainess wrote absorbedly. At last she glanced up and
made a little startled exclamation at seeing them there, and then gave
them cheery greeting. Each placed several scribbled sheets before
her, and she, having first assured herself that Fisbee had bought his
overshoes, and having expressed a fear that Mr. Parker had found her
umbrella too small, as he looked damp (and indeed he _was_ damp), cried
praises on their notes and offered the reporters great applause.
“It is all so splendid!” she cried. “How could you do it so quickly? And
in the rain, too! This is exactly what we need. I've done most of
the things I mentioned, I think, and made a draught of some plans for
hereafter. And about that man's coming out for Congress, I must tell you
it is my greatest hope that he will. We can let it go until he does, and
then----But doesn't it seem to you that it would be a good notion for
the 'Herald' to have a woman's page--'For Feminine Readers,' or, 'Of
Interest to Women'--once a week?”
“A woman's page!” exclaimed Fisbee. “I could never have thought of that,
could you, Mr. Parker?”
“And now,” she continued, “I think that when I've gone over what I've
written and beat it into better shape I shall be ready for something to
eat. Isn't it almost time for luncheon?”
This simple, and surely natural, inquiry had a singular, devastating
effect upon her hearers. They looked upon each other with fallen jaws
and complete stupefaction. The old man began to grow pale, and Parker
glared about him with a wild eye. Fortunately, the editor was too busy
at her work to notice their agitation; she applied herself to making
alterations here and there, sometimes frowningly crossing out whole
lines and even paragraphs, sometimes smiling and beaming at the writing;
and, as she bent earnestly over the paper, against the darkness of the
rainy day, the glamour about her fair hair was like a light in the
room. To the minds of her two companions, this lustre was a gentle but
unbearable accusation; and each dreaded the moment when her Work
should be finished, with a great dread. There was a small “store-room”
adjoining the office, and presently Mr. Parker, sweating at the brow,
walked in there. The old man gave him a look of despairing reproach, but
in a moment the foreman's voice was heard: “Oh, Mr. Fisbee, can you step
here a second?”
“Yes, indeed!” was Fisbee's reply; and he fled guiltily into the
“store-room,” and Parker closed the door. They stood knee-deep in the
clutter and lumber, facing each other abjectly.
“Well, we're both done, anyway, Mr. Fisbee,” remarked the foreman.
“Indubitably, Mr. Parker,” the old man answered; “it is too true.”
“Never to think a blame thing about dinner for her!” Parker continued,
remorsefully. “And her a lady that can turn off copy like a rotary
snowplough in a Dakota blizzard! Did you see the sheets she's piled up
on that desk?”
“There is no cafe--nothing--in Plattville, that could prepare food
worthy of her,” groaned Fisbee. “Nothing!”
“And we never thought of it. Never made a single arrangement. Never
struck us she didn't live on keeping us dry and being good, I guess.”
“How can I go there and tell her that?”
“Lord!”
“She cannot go to the hotel----”
“Well, I guess not! It ain't fit for her. Lum's table is hard enough
on a strong man. Landis doesn't know a good cake from a Fiji missionary
pudding. I don't expect pie is much her style, and, besides, the Palace
Hotel pies--well!--the boss was a mighty uncomplaining man, but I
used to notice his articles on field drainage got kind of sour and
low-spirited when they'd been having more than the regular allowance of
pie for dinner. She can't go there anyway; it's no use; it's after two
o'clock, and the dining-room shuts off at one. I wonder what kind of
cake she likes best.”
“I don't know,” said the perplexed Fisbee. “If we ask her--”
“If we could sort of get it out of her diplomatically, we could
telegraph to Rouen for a good one.”
“Ha!” said the other, brightening up. “You try it, Mr. Parker. I fear I
have not much skill in diplomacy, but if you----”
The compositor's mouth drooped at the corners, and he interrupted
gloomily: “But it wouldn't get here till to-morrow.”
“True; it would not.”
They fell into a despondent reverie, with their chins in their bosoms.
There came a cheerful voice from the next room, but to them it brought
no cheer; in their ears it sounded weak from the need of food and faint
with piteous reproach.
“Father, aren't you coming to have luncheon with me?”
“Mr. Parker, what are we to do?” whispered the old man, hoarsely.
“Is it too far to take her to Briscoes'?”
“In the rain?”
“Take her with you to Tibbs's.”
“Their noon meal is long since over; and their larder is not--is
not--extensive.”
“Father!” called the girl. She was stirring; they could hear her moving
about the room.
“You've got to go in and tell her,” said the foreman, desperately, and
together they stumbled into the room. A small table at one end of it was
laid with a snowy cloth and there was a fragrance of tea, and, amidst
various dainties, one caught a glimpse of cold chicken and lettuce
leaves. Fisbee stopped, dumfounded, but the foreman, after stammeringly
declining an invitation to partake, alleging that his own meal awaited,
sped down to the printing-room, and seized upon Bud Tipworthy with a
heavy hand.
“Where did all that come from, up there?”
“Leave go me! _What_ 'all that'?”
“All that tea and chicken and salad and wafers--all kinds of things;
sardines, for all I know!”
“They come in Briscoes' buckboard while you was gone. Briscoes sent 'em
in a basket; I took 'em up and she set the basket under the table. You'd
seen it if you'd 'a' looked. _Quit_ that!” And it was unjust to cuff the
perfectly innocent and mystified Bud, and worse not to tell him what the
punishment was for.
Before the day was over, system had been introduced, and the “Herald”
was running on it: and all that warm, rainy afternoon, the editor and
Fisbee worked in the editorial rooms, Parker and Bud and Mr. Schofield
(after his return with the items and a courteous message from Ephraim
Watts) bent over the forms downstairs, and Uncle Xenophon was cleaning
the store-room and scrubbing the floor.
An extraordinary number of errands took the various members of the
printing force up to see the editor-in-chief, literally to see the
editor-in-chief; it was hard to believe that the presence had not
flown--hard to keep believing, without the repeated testimony of sight,
that the dingy room upstairs was actually the setting for their jewel;
and a jewel they swore she was. The printers came down chuckling and
gurgling after each interview; it was partly the thought that she
belonged to the “Herald,” _their_ paper. Once Ross, as he cut down one
of the temporarily distended advertisements, looked up and caught the
foreman giggling to himself.
“What in the name of common-sense you laughin' at, Cale?” he asked.
“What are _you_ laughing at?” rejoined the other.
“I dunno!”
The day wore on, wet and dreary outside, but all within the “Herald's”
bosom was snug and busy and murmurous with the healthy thrum of life
and prosperity renewed. Toward six o'clock, system accomplished, the new
guiding-spirit was deliberating on a policy as Harkless would conceive
a policy, were he there, when Minnie Briscoe ran joyously up the stairs,
plunged into the room, waterproofed and radiant, and caught her friend
in her eager arms, and put an end to policy for that day.
But policy and labor did not end at twilight every day; there were
evenings, as in the time of Harkless, when lamps shone from the upper
windows of the “Herald” building. For the little editor worked hard,
and sometimes she worked late; she always worked early. She made some
mistakes at first, and one or two blunders which she took more seriously
than any one else did. But she found a remedy for all such results of
her inexperience, and she developed experience. She set at her task with
the energy of her youthfulness and no limit to her ambition, and she
felt that Harkless had prepared the way for a wide expansion of the
paper's interests; wider than he knew. She had a belief that there were
possibilities for a country newspaper, and she brought a fresh point of
view to operate in a situation where Harkless had fallen, perhaps, too
much in the rut; and she watched every chance with a keen eye and looked
ahead of her with clear foresight. What she waited and yearned for and
dreaded, was the time when a copy of the new “Herald” should be placed
in the trembling hands of the man who lay in the Rouen hospital. Then,
she felt, if he, unaware of her identity, should place everything in her
hands unreservedly, that would be a tribute to her work--and how hard
she would labor to deserve it! After a time, she began to realize that,
as his representative and the editor of the “Herald,” she had become
a factor in district politics. It took her breath--but with a gasp of
delight, for there was something she wanted to do.
Above all, she brought a light heart to her work. One evening in the
latter part of that first week of the new regime, Parker perceived Bud
Tipworthy standing in the doorway of the printing-room, beckoning him
silently to come without.
“What's the matter, Buddie?”
“Listen. She's singin' over her work.”
Parker stepped outside. On the pavement, people had stopped to listen;
they stood in the shadow, looking up with parted lips at the open,
lighted Windows, whence came a clear, soft, reaching voice, lifted in
song; now it swelled louder, unconsciously; now its volume was more
slender and it melted liquidly into the night; again, it trembled and
rose and dwelt in the ear, strong and pure; and, hearing it, you sighed
with unknown longings. It was the “Angels' Serenade.”
Bud Tipworthy's sister, Cynthia, was with him, and Parker saw that she
turned from the window and that she was crying, quietly; she put her
hand on the boy's shoulder and patted it with a forlorn gesture which,
to the foreman's eye, was as graceful as it was sad. He moved closer to
Bud and his big hand fell on Cynthia's brother's other shoulder, as he
realized that red hair could look pretty sometimes; and he wondered why
the editor's singing made Cynthy cry; and at the same time he decided
to be mighty good to Bud henceforth. The spell of night and song was
on him; that and something more; for it is a strange, inexplicable
fact that the most practical chief ever known to the “Herald” had a
singularly sentimental influence over her subordinates, from the moment
of her arrival. Under Harkless's domination there had been no more
steadfast bachelors in Carlow than Ross Schofield and Caleb Parker, and,
like timorous youths in a graveyard, daring and mocking the ghosts in
order to assuage their own fears, they had so jibed and jeered at the
married state that there was talk of urging the minister to preach at
them; but now let it be recorded that at the moment Caleb laid his hand
on Bud's other shoulder, his associate, Mr. Schofield, was enjoying a
walk in the far end of town with a widow, and it is not to be doubted
that Mr. Tipworthy's heart, also, was no longer in his possession,
though, as it was after eight o'clock, the damsel of his desire had
probably long since retired to her couch.
For some faint light on the cause of these spells, we must turn to a
comment made by the invaluable Mr. Martin some time afterward. Referring
to the lady to whose voice he was now listening in silence (which shows
how great the enthralling of her voice was), he said: “When you saw her,
or heard her, or managed to be around, any, where she was, why, if
you couldn't git up no hope of marryin' _her_, you wanted to marry
_somebody_.”
Mr. Lige Willetts, riding idly by, drew rein in front of the lighted
windows, and listened with the others. Presently he leaned from his
horse and whispered to a man near him:
“I know that song.”
“Do you?” whispered the other.
“Yes; he and I heard her sing it, the night he was shot.”
“So!”
“Yes, sir. It's by Beethoven.”
“Is it?”
“It's a seraphic song,” continued Lige.
“No!” exclaimed his friend; then, shaking his head, he sighed: “Well,
it's mighty sweet.”
The song was suddenly woven into laughter in the unseen chamber, and the
lights in the windows went out, and a small lady and a tall lady and
a thin old man, all three laughing and talking happily, came down and
drove off in the Briscoe buckboard. The little crowd dispersed quietly;
Lige Willetts plucked to his horse and cantered away to overtake the
buckboard; William Todd took his courage between his teeth, and, the
song ringing in his ears, made a desperate resolve to call upon Miss
Bardlock that evening, in spite of its being a week day, and Caleb
Parker gently and stammeringly asked Cynthia if she would wait till he
shut up the shop, and let him walk home with her and Bud.
Soon the Square was quiet as before, and there was naught but peace
under the big stars of July.
That day the news had come that Harkless, after weeks of alternate
improvement and relapse, hazardously lingering in the borderland of
shadows, had passed the crucial point and was convalescent. His recovery
was assured. But from their first word of him, from the message that he
was found and was alive, none of the people of Carlow had really doubted
it. They are simple country people, and they know that God is good.