THE STORIES EDITORS BUY AND WHY
THE
STORIES EDITORS
BUY AND WHY
COMPILED BY
JEAN WICK
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1921_
By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(Incorporated)
PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO. (INC.) BOSTON
TO MAGAZINE EDITORS
_Who
through constructive helpfulness
and creative vision
are helping authors to make
the American short story
unique in artistry and literary merit._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE ix
THE WEEK-END GUEST.
By Marie Van Vorst 1
(From _Ainslee’s Magazine_)
THE TERRIBLE CHARGE AGAINST JEFF POTTER.
By Samuel A. Derieux 27
(From _The American Magazine_)
“A SOURCE OF IRRITATION.”
By Stacy Aumonier 53
(From _The Century Magazine_)
“MOMMA.”
By Rupert Hughes 71
(From _Collier’s, The National Weekly_)
BACK PAY.
By Fannie Hurst 99
(From _Cosmopolitan Magazine_)
“CAB, SIR?”
By Samuel Hopkins Adams 139
(From _Everybody’s Magazine_)
YOU’VE GOT TO BE SELFISH.
By Edna Ferber 169
(From _McClure’s Magazine_)
“CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN.”
By Booth Tarkington 193
(From _Metropolitan Magazine_)
THE BELL OF SAINT GREGOIRE.
By Agnes Ross White 223
(From _The People’s Home Journal_)
THE EVENING RICE.
By Achmed Abdullah 239
(From _Pictorial Review_)
THE TAKING OF BILLY RAND.
By Gordon Young 259
(From _Short Stories_)
ACCORDING TO RUSKIN.
By Harriet Welles 279
(From _The Woman’s Home Companion_)
THE CRYSTAL FLASK.
By Paul Rosenwey 293
(From _Young’s Magazine_)
* * * * *
WHY THE EDITORS BUY 305
FOOTNOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
PREFATORY NOTE
During the past twenty years the short story has come to occupy a
distinct place in American letters. While it must perhaps be granted
that we are not pre-eminent in the novel or the essay, we may quite
fairly pride ourselves upon the high achievement of our authors in
short story writing. American magazines (and this is said in no spirit
of braggadocio) today carry more and better short stories than do
the magazines of any other country. In addition it should be taken
into consideration that we in America publish a greater number of
periodicals devoted either wholly or in part to fiction than is the
custom elsewhere. Thus automatically the would-be short story writer
is given opportunity and encouragement, two powerful factors in all
creative endeavor. Success in short story writing means both fame
and pecuniary reward. It is professionally worth while both from the
artistic and the financial points of view.
To the American editor should be given much of the credit for this
development in the short story. A story, no matter how vital or well
written, carries no real weight until it is in print. The printed
page gives it permanency; through print it reaches the multitude. The
editor, at his or her desk, has final say as to what shall or shall
not go into the pages of his or her magazine. There are often outside
factors that shape the magazine’s editorial and fiction policy. But
editors are sincere in desiring to give their readers the best stories
they can procure of the kind they are ready to publish.
But they do a great deal more than just select from the mass of
material that is submitted to them. They go out after the type of
stories they want. They see the men and women who can write and
personally confer with them, suggesting new things to write about, new
trends in thought, new angles of approach, new methods of handling.
To George Horace Lorimer certainly should go much of the credit for
the evolution of the American business story; a chance remark of Ray
Long’s at editorial conference brought the first Pell Street tales
into existence; it is no exaggeration to say that John M. Siddall
with his search for clean-cut Americanism has had much to do with the
growing prominence and popularity of American small town portrayal
which popularity has in turn profoundly affected the development of the
American novel; to Perriton Maxwell should be given the honor of having
been the first to publish stories of Jewish life in one of our leading
monthlies. Not only do the editors shape and mould the literary taste
of their readers but they have and do actually create new forms of
literary output.
The technique of the American short story is more or less fixed and
numerous textbooks have been compiled thereon. But technique is not a
rigid matter. The importance of the subject matter or sheer artistry
can often “put over” a story that defies every one of the traditional
or accepted rules. Too, different editors and different magazines have
their own ideas on technique. Therefore, for any one who would write
it is best to study and analyze carefully the pages of the various
magazines.
To succeed in the short story field the writer needs not only to know
how to write but where to sell. To get before the short story reading
public it is vital not only to have a story to tell and to know how to
tell it but to know also where to offer that story when it is told.
In selling a short story it is not primarily the attitude of any one
individual critic or group of self-appointed critics that matters;
it is the attitude of the editor toward the particular story under
consideration. As there are many stories there are many editors. They
are all on the lookout for new and good material. If you have created
a good story it is bound some day to find its publisher and thereby to
reach its public.
In order that this book may be of practical service to the new writer
and to those already well established the editors were asked why
they bought the particular stories they did, in other words their
attitude in fiction buying. Their replies are printed verbatim. Many
came in the form of personal letters and this will explain why there
may be a certain lack of formality in some of the editorial replies.
But on consideration this was decided the most practical way in which
the editor might reach his audience. Analysis of the answers will
show the veriest tyro that a story that might do excellently for the
Metropolitan need not be desired by the Dial and vice versa.
In the compiler’s mind the magazines automatically group themselves
into classes, a grouping which attempts to reach no conclusion as to
relative literary or commercial values. Certain of these magazines were
asked to include a story that had appeared in its pages and which from
the point of view of that magazine’s editorial policy was a highly
desirable and good story. Here the editors hesitated: they had many
good stories that might be included. Eventually, though, choices were
made and the authors kindly consenting to their reprinting, the stories
are given herewith.
Here again it cannot be made too clear that no editorial verdict was
attempted in including stories from some of the magazines and in
omitting those from others. The aim of the book is to be of practical
service in pointing out reasons for fiction buying. All of the
magazines could not be included because of space limitation. As far
as possible different types of magazines were chosen. The editors of
these magazines again one and all were unanimous in making it clear
that they could have suggested many other stories that had appeared
in their pages that were equally good considered literarily or
artistically. But as the book does attempt to guide and direct--so far
as this is possible in an art--they chose stories that they considered
representative in a major number of ways.
Our leading weeklies lay much emphasis upon their fiction. The
Saturday Evening Post buys more short stories a year than does any
other magazine. Because of its enormous circulation the contributor
has the satisfaction of feeling that he or she is reaching a maximum
number of readers. The style of stories in this magazine changes from
year to year as the editor has been repeatedly heard to say that the
reading public is apt to tire of any one type no matter how well done.
The practical note is apt to preponderate. In Collier’s, the National
Weekly, we find a very American story, not exploiting big cities and
millionaire circles, but rather the moderately incomed home of the
average American--its good fortune, its vicissitudes, its every day
point of view, handled with exquisite sympathy. Leslie’s, limited in
space, is frankly after the constructive business story.
In any consideration of the American monthly magazines automatically
Harper’s, Scribner’s and Century come to mind in a group. These put
great emphasis upon literary execution. The Atlantic Monthly is perhaps
not quite so rigid in its demand for form while the Dial is almost
radical. The Touchstone rates artistry most highly, the article by Mrs.
Roberts in this book making her views on the whole matter most explicit.
There is another large group of monthly magazines, more generally
popular perhaps, in which there is the very greatest diversity and
yet differentiation of editorial wants. It will pay to study these
magazines closely. The student will at once see why a story that might
be most popular in the Metropolitan would not have a chance in the
American--and at that no purely literary or technical point need be
involved. In this group of magazines there is the greatest possible
chance for divergence in story treatment, in subject matter, even
in methods of characterization. Since Ray Long has taken over the
Cosmopolitan he has repeatedly shown his catholicity of taste as has
Karl Harriman in subject matter in the Red Book.
It is easy to decide which stories may prove suitable for our magazines
that are primarily interested in sex problems, and this does not
necessarily mean sex in any too realistic or too sordid sense. The
editors who are selecting the material for these periodicals feel that
sex is the fundamental motivation in every human act; that therefore
its presentation is always interesting, of moment, and bound to
intrigue a large group of readers. A certain number of the smaller of
these magazines demand liveliness of presentation rather than newness
of plot. All are apt to stress a certain up-to-date and social quality.
We have a large group of action magazines. They look for “story.” In
this group the Street and Smith periodicals are particularly interested
in the story that has an American hero and an American environment.
Some of the others are not quite so restrictive. Perhaps “a good yarn
rattling well told” is the best slogan presentation of their wants. But
like all slogans it is unfair. The frequent presence of Joseph Conrad
in these magazines certainly would seem to prove that craftsmanship is
appreciated.
The women’s magazines make a point of carrying as good fiction as can
be procured and in some of them we are finding the best short stories
of the day. The Pictorial Review, for instance, is not circumscribed
in its point of view; it has room for the purely artistic creation;
it welcomes warmly the picture of life whose main characteristic is
sympathetic narration. Other magazines in this group feel that they
should publish only human interest stories as these make the strongest
appeal to their particular circle of women readers.
Many of the stories in the farm and fireside journals are written with
a distinct purpose; to portray intimately some heretofore little known
section of the country; to illustrate some new agricultural theory;
to create sympathy for some rural situation. But “purpose” is never
allowed to destroy story values.
Our juvenile magazines make no secret of their aim. It is to influence
rightly the changing character, the shifting ideals and aspirations
of the growing boys and girls who come under the sway of their story
pages. The fiction must be of absorbing interest from the point of view
of the young, but at the same time it must contain nothing that would
react detrimentally.
From the above brief summary it is easy to see that a story that might
prove eminently acceptable from the point of view of one magazine
might not do at all for another. That the placing of a story, in
other words, demands a certain amount of knowledge of market wants
and market conditions. This brings us to the consideration of the
agent. Is or is not an agent of help? This question is largely one
for self-determination. It depends somewhat on the personality of the
author. All agents cannot help all authors: there is a give and take
of personality; in other words, the human equation has something to do
with the success of the relationship. An agent cannot sell a story that
is not sellable; an agent cannot repeatedly get higher prices for the
author than the author can get for himself. An agent does know more of
the markets and its fluctuations; agency advice--as it is a matter of
business--is apt to be impersonal and good; agency direction can save
much misguided effort.
There is an impression that agents are perhaps not popular with
editors. This is not true. Perhaps the letter of James E. Tower, editor
of The Delineator given herewith and which came unsolicited, is as good
actual proof of this fact as any statement which the writer might make.
Dear Miss Wick:
A certain periodical, which has its distribution amongst writers, has
put in my mouth words which I did not say and which do an injustice
alike to some good friends of mine and to me.
I am quoted as having said, at a recent luncheon, that editors are
not keen about purchasing from literary brokers. I never said that
nor implied it. I said that I felt that the brokers had been the
largest single factor in raising and maintaining authors’ prices;
that the publishing trade were inclined, on this account, to look
askance at the agent system, but that authors formerly did not
receive adequate compensation and that the better prices had raised
the standard of authorship and benefited the trade, as well as the
writers themselves.
My own editorial career is sufficient refutation of the statement
attributed to me. I think I never heard an editor express any
prejudice against the broker system.
Sincerely yours,
JAMES E. TOWER.
Lastly do not let it be felt that the compiler of these editorial
want paragraphs, this editorial exposition of the stories the editor
wants and buys, desires to express any personal opinion as to the
relative literary merits or commercial status of the magazines listed
in this book. This is not a book of criticism. It is an effort to have
the editors talk directly to those who for any reason whatever are
interested in the American short story as it is published week in and
week out in our magazines.
JEAN WICK.
NEW YORK CITY.
_Ainslee’s Magazine_
THE WEEK-END GUEST
BY
MARIE VAN VORST
THE WEEK-END GUEST[1]
By MARIE VAN VORST
From the room where Patricia Hereford’s wedding gifts were displayed,
the Long Island Sound was visible, and it lay in the distance on this
October day, blue as a patch of cornflowers. Down at the dock the
yacht waited to take the master of the house to town. Underneath the
window in kilts, bare legs, bagpipes and all, a Highland shepherd,
imported by the lady of the house from his native heather because he
was picturesque, watched his sheep and was homesick to the bone! The
twenty-five Southdown sheep were astoundingly clean and moved about
in patches on the flawless lawn. Now and again the wretched piper
played a few Scotch melodies as he was paid to do, and the lady of the
house listened to the piper’s tunes with her pencil on her lips as she
prepared for the detective a list of the wedding presents.
“What melody is Sandy playing now, Nell?”
One of the bridesmaids, a girl who was staying in the house, perched
nonchalantly on a table, a notebook and a pencil in her hands. Miss
Moore was helping Mrs. Hereford list the wedding presents, and
presumably Miss Cynthia Moore was thinking of her own wedding, when it
should come to pass, as bridesmaids will! She dictated to Mrs. Hereford.
“Number one thousand and six, Nell, a pigskin purse from Eric Johnson.
Pat’s own chauffeur, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hereford, “nice of him and in perfectly good taste.”
Miss Moore swung to and fro a foot encased in a correct golf brogue.
She was the champion woman golfer of the Eastern States, and came
downstairs in the morning dressed for golf, ready for her game. Indeed
she said she only put on evening dress in order to keep out of social
jail!
“That’s the nicest thing I have heard you say about any of the
presents, Nell! _If_ people who sent them could only hear you!”
The lady of the house shrugged.
“I have always wondered why certain frightful things were manufactured
and now I know they are for wedding gifts. The boring part is that over
a thousand people will have to be lied to and thanked! Poor Patricia!”
There they were, over a thousand wedding presents! Patricia Hereford
was a popular débutante and her father the best host on Long Island.
Everything that indifferent taste could select and money pay for, from
Hereford’s own gift of diamonds to the modest pigskin purse, was here
displayed. One of the most truly beautiful things was a pink Persian
prayer rug of rich soft tones, a Persian proverb in delicate lettering
running around the border. It hung on the wall opposite the pearls and
valuable jewels. Two rooms on the second floor of the big country house
had been consecrated to this exhibition, and the presents were to be
seen by the guests on the following afternoon, after the wedding.
“Mr. Jones is downstairs in the fur room,” Mrs. Hereford said, “but
his men have not come up from Waybrook, and I thought he had better
stay with the sables and the silver fox. We must not budge from here
until they come, but you can go to Pat if you like, Cinnie. I’ll stay
on.” The lady of the house glanced out at the Highland piper and his
astoundingly clean sheep on the lawn.
“There!” exclaimed Miss Moore. “That’s the tune I mean, Nell! What is
it--do you know? Hear it and weep, don’t you think so?”
Mrs. Hereford hummed the tune through, accompanied by the melancholic
piper from without.
“Jolly!” exclaimed Cynthia from her table. “Jolly in your adorable
voice! Are there any words that go with it or is it only a sob and a
wail?”
“Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands oh! Where have you been?
They have slain the Earl of Moray and laid him on the green.
He was a braw gallant and he rode for the glove,
And the gallant Earl of Moray he was the Queen’s love;
And long shall the Lady look from the Castle down
To hear the Earl of Moray go stounin’ through the Town.”
Mrs. Hereford’s really beautiful voice filled the gift room with its
sweetness.
“I’ll catalogue wedding presents indefinitely,” said Miss Moore, “if
you’ll go on like that. Anyhow, Nell, he is the Queen’s Love all right!”
“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Hereford sharply.
“Captain Ramsay. He is crazy about you.”
Mrs. Hereford had been comparing her list with that of Miss Moore. She
went over to the window, looked out until the red died from her face,
and said over her shoulder:
“Go on with your list, Cinnie, and don’t be a goose.”
The girl wrote diligently for a few moments. Mrs. Hereford returned to
the table where the pigskin purse reposed between the red lacquer box,
on which the card read: “Maharajah of Singapore,” and a sapphire ring
on the other side.
“I am awfully sorry for you, Nell, you’ll miss Pat beyond words, shan’t
you?”
“Yes,” said the lady of the house, “to-morrow night I shall be utterly
alone.”
“How nice for your husband!” Miss Moore laughed. “Where is poor old
Tommy going, anyway?”
“Nowhere,” said the lady of the house coolly. “I mean _we_ will be all
alone.”
Mrs. Hereford was twenty years younger than her husband. She had
never asked herself so often before, how she was going to be able
to entertain the prospect of endless luncheons and endless dinners
opposite Tommy Hereford.
“Entirely alone,” she murmured again, walking down the long line of
presents. From the splendid pearls she came back to Eric Johnson’s
purse and stood near it as though something drew her to that special
spot. She had not married Hereford to bring up his children, she was
only a little older than they. She had been a sister to them during the
five years of her married life and Jack Hereford, who was unpopular
with his father, adored his stepmother.
“Why did you marry your husband, Helen?” Cynthia Moore asked
laughingly, but she did wonder with all her might. Since she had known
the two she had never been able to understand the union.
Mrs. Hereford, leaning with one hand on the gift table, the other
playing with her long rope of pearls, said absent-mindedly,
“Oh, there must be twenty reasons why!”
“And you can’t think of one!” exclaimed the girl.
On the hard floor of the next room fell the footsteps of some one
coming quickly toward them.
“Listen, Nell,” laughed the girl who was staying in the house, “‘the
Earl of Moray is stounin’ through the town!’ You’ll miss him, too, when
he goes to-morrow! I am awfully sorry for him.”
“Hello, Captain Ramsay!” she said. “Come and take my place and list
these things with Mrs. Hereford.” She held out the book and the pencil
to him. She understood many things.
Since Ramsay had come to Waybrook ten days before with Jack Hereford,
he had scarcely spoken a word to any one; scarcely looked at any one
but the lady of the house, and his absorption in her was dangerously
charming to a woman not in love with her husband.
“You don’t have to stay in the house all morning, do you, Mrs.
Hereford?” he asked eagerly. Ramsay wore the uniform of the Blank
Flying Corps, and his breast was full of stars.
“Yes, Miss Moore and I are on guard here, and I wish you would do
something for me, will you, like an angel?”
Ramsay mechanically picked up the pigskin purse.
“I have got one like this,” he said, “it doesn’t look like a wedding
present! I have carried mine through the war and it is as empty now as
it was then,” he laughed.
“Please, please!” urged the lady of the house, “do run down to the
graperies where we were yesterday----”
Ramsay interrupted.
“I wanted to go with you now, Mrs. Hereford, down there; can’t we?”
“I am on guard. If anything were stolen from this room, Cynthia and I
would be responsible. I am making up a lunch basket for Patricia. She
is crazy about Hamburg grapes and I want to put some in.”
“You only want to send me away,” he laughed. “I never went on so many
distant errands in my life! Isn’t there something you want in New York?”
“I do want the grapes!”
She wanted to get him from under the clever scrutiny of Cynthia Moore,
and after he had gone out of the room, reluctant in every move of his
body, Miss Moore asked,
“What do you know about Captain Ramsay?”
The bridesmaid had a fashion of putting questions when she was
interested in anything with a frank abruptness, at once alluring and
embarrassing.
“Not much, just picturesque things,” said the lady of the house.
“There’s the last item, Cinnie, diamond pendant, value four thousand
dollars.”
Cynthia Moore scrutinized her list. “All right! We have varied it
agreeably! We began with ‘gift of the bridegroom, one hundred thousand
dollars,’ and we drift along to a pigskin purse, value one dollar
fifty, I should say, and close with a medium note, a little four
thousand! Tell me about Ramsay.”
Miss Moore had arrived the day before, coming back with the Herefords
from the races, to a large house party of which Jack Hereford, son of
the house, home from France, and Captain Ralph Ramsay were part.
“Jack’s crazy about him,” said Mrs. Hereford. “He is Jack’s best
friend.”
“’M!” murmured Miss Moore. “Excuse me, my dear! You have a soft spot in
your heart for Jack. I don’t understand it--I never have.”
Mrs. Hereford went on.
“They have been together for two years in France in the same sector.
Captain Ramsay is an ace with a ripping record, as you know.”
“No,” returned the bridesmaid, giving her book up to Mrs. Hereford, “I
don’t know anything about him.”
Miss Moore was an unusually understanding young person; some people
said she had ten senses where others have only seven.
“Well!” said the lady of the house. “He is quite poor; lots of nice
people are. He is from the West as you can hear by his accent.”
“No one has a chance to hear much of his accent but you! He never
speaks to any one else.”
“Ridiculous!” said the lady of the house. “Jack told me that every one
in the sector from the mascot to the colonel was crazy about Ralph, and
as you see, he has all the medals that can be won.”
“Too bad he couldn’t have worked off a few on Jack,” said Cynthia.
“Jack is as bare as a bone, and his father seems to have it in for him
harder than ever! What has Jack done since he was demobilized, Nell?”
Mrs. Hereford shook her head.
“Don’t ask me! My husband doesn’t like my interference. I learned that
and I don’t try to know. Jack is going to California to-morrow. He is
going on with aviation, and I hope will go into the United States army
for good. I _hope_ he will.”
“Too bad!” murmured Miss Moore. For in her kind and understanding heart
there was a very warm place for the master of the house. “Too bad such
a fine man as Tommy should have a son like Jack.”
“You are very unfair to him,” said the lady of the house warmly. “I
think I am the only one to understand him. I believe the very best
of Jack, and I know he’ll come out all right. He has a good military
record over there.”
Miss Moore laughed. “Well, he did not get shot in the back! I know I’m
rotten, but--” She came impulsively over to her friend and put her arms
around her. “Now the Earl of Moray is another thing. _He’s_ all right.
You can see his record on his face and on his breast, and I excuse
his ‘stounin’ through the town’ and his entire absorption in another
woman--he is all right!”
Cynthia Moore kissed Mrs. Hereford and then went upstairs to Patricia,
who had been waiting for her for the last half hour. The lady of the
house was not sorry to be alone.
She knew about Ralph Ramsay only what her stepson had told her in his
letters from France during the past two years. In these letters Ralph
Ramsay had been described as a “wonder, a corker, a dare-devil in the
air, a chap who defied danger and death, a little bit of all right,”
and when Jack took the trouble to detail some thrilling event or to
tell of fine achievements, Ralph Ramsay would turn out to be the man
who had done the thing. In Jack’s letters the ace had charmed this
imaginative and loveless woman, and his valor and his courage had
fascinated her from afar. In her room, on her bureau and on her desk,
were numerous snapshots of the two young men, and the ace seemed always
to be smiling at her and to be the expression of _la joie de vivre_. He
attracted her enormously, and in the little pictures she grew to know
every line of his slim body and of his beautiful head. As he waved his
cap at the side of a broken machine from which he had landed that time
safely, he seemed to wave to her and to greet her.
When her husband came into her little room, if he resented the fact
that there were no pictures of himself there and too many of his
scapegrace of a son, his good breeding did not allow him to comment on
the fact! He showed a friendly approval of Captain Ramsay, however.
“Now there is a fine-looking chap, Nell, and I hope to God he does Jack
good. I’d like a son like that!”
But he saw the flying man under different colors when Ramsay appeared
at Waybrook. Ramsay came into a conventional atmosphere with a vivid
charm of which no one was unconscious, and if Jack had written that
from the mascot to the colonel he was popular in France--he was popular
at Waybrook, from the chauffeur by whose side he had sat on the way
from the train, to the lady of the house. Not even the big wedding with
the rush, excitement, and absorption had been able to cloud over the
brightness of the passing of Ralph Ramsay. If he defied danger in the
air, the young man defied convention here; and with utter disregard of
propriety he fell in love with the lady of the house and took no pains
to conceal his passion. Mrs. Hereford remembered what her stepson had
said of him: “Women go crazy about Ralph. In the hospital he had the
nurses nailed. It was comic, the poor chaps on either side of him stood
no chance at all!”
Tommy Hereford, the best host on Long Island, had on this occasion
displayed a perfect hospitality! For ten days he watched this young man
make love to his wife and did not throw him out! Hereford sincerely
loved his wife, and was determined to win her if he could. He had no
intention of playing the losing game of a jealous husband.
The day before, to protect Ramsay and to get him away where she could
warn him, and try to make him behave, she had snatched half an hour
from the rushing day and taken him to the graperies. He had drawn her
into his arms and held her in spite of the fact that the gardener was
in the next glass house and talking across to Mrs. Hereford. Ramsay had
said over the man’s voice and over the scent of violets:
“I love you terribly--with every bit of me--thank God I was not smashed
up in France before I could tell you this!”
Now she knew he would think of every moment of this. She could never
go into those graperies again without a thrill. Her husband was
going to town on the yacht and came in smoking and holding out two
_one-thousand-dollar_ bills.
“Nell, I want Patricia to have some pocket money in her dressing case.
Slip these in, will you?”
“Tommy,” exclaimed his wife, “you never stop, do you?”
“I am glad I don’t _have_ to stop,” said the father, “when it is the
case of doing something for my little girl.”
“I’ll put them in this little leather purse,” said Mrs. Hereford and
she took up the little pocketbook. “Pat says she is going to take it
with her, Tommy, and she’ll be frightfully pleased.”
He gave her the bills, and Mrs. Hereford slipped them into the little
purse.
“Going to leave it there around loose like that?” asked the business
man.
“Why not? Jones’ men will be here in a minute. Think of the things
farther along and what they are worth. There is no one here but
ourselves.”
Through the other doorway Jack Hereford and Ralph Ramsay came in
together. Since he had been at Waybrook, Ramsay had never seen the
husband and wife alone together. He stopped short on the threshold, but
the son went in.
“I’ve not been robbing the graperies,” Ramsay said. “These are going in
your daughter’s lunch basket, Mr. Hereford.”
“I dare say,” nodded the father. “Everything goes with Pat!”
“Look what dad has just given her.” Mrs. Hereford held up the purse and
the bills. “I am putting them in this little pigskin purse so that if
she wants to buy some stamps she’ll find them handy.”
Jack looked at his father’s last generous gift without a word, turned
about and went and stood at the window. The piper, who felt he had done
as much as his salary demanded, was silent. With his back to the house
he gazed beyond the Sound toward the bonnie hills of Scotland. Ramsay
seemed to appreciate the generosity, however.
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Wonderful to be able to do things like that
for one’s children!”
And he looked from the husband to the wife, but his tone was bitter.
Mrs. Hereford had never heard a note like this in his voice. As her
husband went out of the room and his son slowly followed him, Mrs.
Hereford asked Ramsay:
“Why did you speak so bitterly when my husband gave Patricia his
parting gift? It was not like you!”
“Bitterly!” he exclaimed. “My dad threw me out when I was twelve--he
married again--I wasn’t wanted, and since then I have never known
a home. I have knocked about the world. I have never seen a family
life and when Jack used to talk of his people I never believed that
anything like this existed! And now that I see what it means to a
chap, it makes me bitter, that’s all!”
“Poor boy!”
“Oh, no! Oh, no,” he hurried. “For God’s sake, don’t pity me! I don’t
want to grouch. I have been hungry, I have always been poor, but I’ve
managed to get something of life everywhere! I suppose you’d call me an
adventurer.”
He threw back his beautiful head and laughed.
“It is a good adventure all right and I am glad I am part of it.”
He took her hand, looked down at her with his wonderful frank smile,
and with the courage that conquers the world.
“I am glad that all those hard paths have brought me here to you. I
have seen a lot of women, but I never cared like this.”
She believed it and he kissed her again deeply, deeply, many times;
indifferent to the fact that they might be observed, and how serious it
would be for her; but she freed herself saying:
“What madness! This must have its end, you know!”
And he murmured passionately, “Yes, it must have its end, dearest. When
can I see you?”
“To-night,” she said, “in the music room at twelve--at half past
twelve.”
Unmistakably some one was coming in the hall. Mrs. Hereford turned and
hurriedly left the room.
After she had gone out Ramsay stood motionless beside the long tables.
Life, which had been so full of unkindness to him and so full of
caprices, seemed at last to have smiled upon him. Only certain moments
in the air when above the German lines he had escaped the enemy’s
barrage and later brought down his black foe--seen him fall, only in
moments of such magnitude, had he felt lifted as high as to-day.
Here some one called:
“Nell! Nell, where are you?”
And down through the long room, next where his own eager footsteps had
gone “stounin’” on the parquet floor, came Patricia Hereford, the
bride, in her wedding dress, looking for her stepmother. She stood
hesitatingly on the threshold between the rooms.
“Where’s mother, Captain Ramsay?”
Patricia passed for a beauty. She was happy and healthy, lit by young
expectancy and young hope and love. White as a lily, and tall as a
lily, she stood looking about at her beautiful things as a child might
at his Christmas gifts.
“What a crowd of things!” she murmured. “What an awful lot, isn’t
it? And all for little me.” She nodded and laughed. “It will take a
thousand years to write letters of thanks for them all. I’ll make Nelly
do it.”
She slowly walked along in front of the presents, lifting a card here,
stopping a moment there, only half attentive, half seeing them, having
this day more dazzling things than material jewels to think about. She
stopped finally, before the pigskin purse lying between the sapphire
ring and the lacquer box. The young man who had been thrown out of
family life at twelve to fight for his existence, watched this spoiled
society girl in her satin dress, surrounded by objects whose value
footed up to hundreds of thousands.
“I have not _half_ seen the things yet! Aren’t they wonderful?”
She picked up the purse.
“This is from my chauffeur. Wasn’t it kind of him?”
She opened it mechanically, looked up at Ramsay, and said, laughing:
“Oh, gracious! That’s daddy!”
“It was meant for a surprise for you.”
“Never mind,” she said, “I won’t tell. Indeed, if any one asks, I’ll
swear it was empty.” She laughed and put it down again.
“It is great of you, Captain Ramsay, to have watched the presents for
me. Thank you a thousand times.”
Ramsay looked up at the prayer rug.
“I wish since you are here, Miss Hereford, you’d tell me what the
letters around this prayer rug mean! What do they say?”
She thought a minute.
“I have got it written out upstairs somewhere.”
It was difficult for the bride to bring her attention to Persian
characters.
“As near as I can remember they say:
“To the Great Lover Honor and Dishonor Life and Death are in the
hands of the Beloved.”
Ramsay nodded. “Great!” he said. “I like it awfully. It’s ripping.”
“Hello, Pat!” Her brother stood on the threshold she had crossed.
“Hello, people! I have been looking for you, Pat. I have been up to
your room.”
The two young people, absorbed in a saying of the Far East, did not
answer. Patricia and Ralph stood with their backs to the sapphire ring
and the maharajah’s red lacquer box and the pigskin purse.
“The Maharajah of Singapore,” said Miss Hereford, “gave me wonderful
lessons last year in Boston. All the girls were crazy about him. You
read from left to right.” She pointed with her slender finger of the
left hand on which the wedding ring would be very soon. “There like
that, see:
“‘To the Great Lover Honor and Dishonor’ on the first line; ‘Life and
Death are in the hands of the Beloved’ on the second line.”
The Scotch piper without, on the flawless lawn with his twenty-five
astoundingly clean sheep, had decided to take his grazing herd farther
along and had gone to the end of the park. From the distance they could
hear the tune of his melancholic music as it came to them faintly as
they stood there reading the rug.
“And the gallant Earl of Moray he was the queen’s love.”
“The Great Lover,” Ramsay repeated the words; they were fascinating.
Oh, it was worth while in life to be a great lover! Ah, he could be it
now for her--for her--for the woman he had kissed and held in his arms!
“Mr. Rolland would like to speak to Miss Hereford in her room.”
No one but the family was allowed in the gift room and the footman with
a message for Patricia from the bridegroom stopped halfway down the
next room, and even though she was so near being Mrs. Rolland, the girl
blushed at the name and started forward.
“I’ll come at once. Captain Ramsay, do find Nell. Ask her to come up to
my room. I must see her.”
“I can’t leave here,” said Ramsay. “Jack will tell her. I say, old
man--” And he turned round to speak to Jack, but Hereford had simply
crossed the room and gone out by the other door.
* * * * *
As Mrs. Hereford, after leaving Ramsay, went out of the gift room she
ran into young Hereford, who caught her arm and drew her toward her own
room.
“Nell, come along with me a second, will you?”
Her stepchildren called her by her first name. She was more like a
sister than a mother to them. She was always dreading demands of money
from Jack, for whenever he wanted either to confess to her or to demand
a favor, he made her boudoir a confessional.
Mrs. Hereford was a Southerner, accustomed to a great deal of
admiration from young men, and Jack Hereford was especially chivalrous
and devoted to her. He might well be, for she had been his defender
against his father more than once. Now he put her in a comfortable
chair and called in to her maid, who happened to be in the next room.
“Marie, like an angel fetch a couple of cocktails for Mrs. Hereford and
me, will you?”
“You should rest, Nell; you’ve been worn out with all this rush.”
When he had made his stepmother comfortable, he lit a cigarette for
her, took one himself, and looked around at the photographs of himself
and Ramsay.
“Gee, what a lot of me! You framed everything I ever sent you, I guess.
Isn’t Ralph a corker? Now he’s got the good luck to be staying on. I’ve
brought you here, Nell, to say good-by. I’ve got to go to-day.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“You mean to say you are going to miss the wedding?”
“I am awfully cut up about it--military orders, and--honestly, I’m not
sorry to get away. Dad has been rotten to me--absolutely rotten!”
The maid brought the two cocktails on a tray. Jack drank his and said
half smiling:
“You’re a brick, Nell. Ralph will bring me news of everything when he
comes. Good-by--don’t get too tired. See you at Christmas.” He leaned
over, kissed her, and went to bid his sister good-by.
The lady of the house, while alone in her room the next few moments,
received countless telephone calls and messages. As soon as they knew
she was to be found every one came to her. Only after she had dismissed
the last messenger could she draw a long breath and remember Ralph in
the room beyond.
Ramsay had become a great excitement and a problem. To-morrow he would
be gone, however, and to-night she would try to put things on another
footing, and in his absence turn to the occupations of her busy social
life to try to forget him.
As she passed through the apartment adjoining the gift room, she could
see the tables weighed down with their priceless things, and Ralph
still alone in front of the maharajah’s lacquer box and the sapphire
ring opposite the prayer rug on the wall. She could see, too, that in
his hands _was the little purse_; _he was closing it--slipping the
strap under the band_. He put it quickly down as he heard her steps and
came toward her with a radiant face as though he had no thought beyond
the fact that she had come back and alone. She had time only to meet
his eyes with a troubled question in her own, for, sharp and alert, Mr.
Jones, with one of the other detectives, followed behind her. The three
together entered the room where Ramsay stood. Jones said briskly:
“Now, we’ll take charge here, Mrs. Hereford, and relieve you, Captain
Ramsay.”
But the young man paid no more attention to them than if they had been
ghosts. He was looking only at the woman whom he had taken lately in
his arms.
“Since you went away I have learned to read the writing on the wall.”
She did not answer. She was not thinking of Persian characters and
Persian rugs.
“Miss Hereford came in her wedding gown. She was looking for you and
she read me the writing on the wall.”
“I have forgotten what it says.”
At the far end of the big room Jones and his man were comparing the
lists and checking them.
“I saw Miss Hereford, too,” said Jones. “She came to the fur room to
tell me about the little pigskin purse with loose cash--two thousand
dollars! I told Miss Hereford it was a mistake to let loose cash like
that lie around.”
And the detective took up the little pocketbook, undid the strap which
Mrs. Hereford had just seen Ramsay close. Jones was perfunctory, and he
looked into the little purse out of habit. Finding it empty, he held it
over to Mrs. Hereford and Ramsay, saying:
“Empty as a drum.”
Jones was delighted. He was glad of the snappy little incident, and
his man, at the other end of the room, turned round with alacrity at
his chief’s voice. Captain Ramsay, his hands in his pockets, stood
perfectly motionless, looking quietly at the lady of the house. Before
he could speak she said:
“Miss Hereford is very careless, and how could she possibly exchange
two thousand-dollar bills on her honeymoon? I thought as you did, Mr.
Jones, and I told her father before he went to town I had a lot of
large bills to pay on the place and I wanted some cash. Mr. Hereford
asked me to slip in my own check instead. I left it out on my desk in
my boudoir. I’ll go and fetch it now.”
There was nothing whatsoever to say to the lady of the house--it was
perfectly _en règle_.
“All right,” said Jones. “We’ll list it properly and it will be much
safer.”
As the lady of the house went out the detective said to Captain Ramsay:
“Now if you want to go off duty?”
The young man even then looked at nothing but the disappearing figure
of Helen Hereford. He stared at it as if he wanted to follow her, then
wheeled about and went out by the opposite door. He called out to Jones:
“I am going to have a bit of air before luncheon.”
* * * * *
How that day passed she never knew. She had gone to Patricia and kissed
her under her wedding veil, and there had been the bustle in the busy
house--countless things to be done, to be decided--endless messages
and calls. No one saw Captain Ramsay or knew where he had gone and, at
dinner, when the host asked for him, a manservant answered:
“Captain Ramsay was called over the phone by a brother officer and has
gone to the club. He has taken his traps.”
“_Après la guerre comme à la guerre!_” said Cynthia Moore. “Manners!
That’s the Earl of Moray all over!” And she made a grimace at Mrs.
Hereford as much as to say: “You packed him off at last, and no wonder.”
He had simply fled, and the shame and the degradation sickened her to
the soul. He had not given her time to recover from his passionate
declarations before he had stolen under her very eyes, one might say,
under her very kisses. How had he dared to touch her? How _had_ he
dared?
By dinner time she was so overcome by her wretchedness that she was
obliged to go to her boudoir to shut herself away. As she saw him on
the little photograph by the side of his machine, ready to ascend--and
in another near the broken wing of a fallen plane after an accident,
she thought:
“Far better to have died than to have come back to this! What must this
day have been for him?” All day she disputed with herself, loathing
herself one moment, believing him innocent the next.
Her husband had come out to Waybrook early. He, as well as Cynthia
Moore, thought that Mrs. Hereford had sent the young man away. Hereford
came in to his wife’s room just before dinner.
“I’ll be glad when all this is over and you can rest.”
She looked at him gratefully. He seemed so true and honorable. She
turned away that he might not see her tears.
“I am dog tired, Tommy, and I’ll be glad, too, when it’s all over.”
Mrs. Hereford was a true musician, and her husband loved her talent.
When she came to Waybrook after her marriage she found the beautiful
music room he had created waiting for her. Hereford had copied it from
a villa near Cremona in Italy. The woodwork lining the walls had been
brought to this American house from a music room whose traditions were
hundreds of years old. Besides modern instruments--a phonograph, a
harp, and two grand pianos looking at each other from the opposite ends
of the room--rare instruments hung on the walls. Before the windows
leading out on the porches, fell curtains of Renaissance brocade. The
room was rich in tone and full of shadow and charm. The lady of the
house had seen Captain Ramsay alone in this room for the first time
one evening when a guest in the smoking room beyond had been telling a
ghost story.
She and Captain Ramsay had played “Manon,” “Butterfly,” and Irish
songs to make a thrilling accompaniment for a thrilling tale, but more
sincerely to cover what Ramsay was saying to her in his young, eager
voice with his young, eager feelings.
As Helen Hereford now came quickly in the music room past midnight she
found it was still as death and it seemed to her as nearly ominous.
She walked softly over the thick rugs. The black paneling of the walls
made a striking background for her figure in white evening dress.
From one of the windows through which streamed October moonlight, the
curtains were drawn; and the night, suggesting only beauty and peace,
did not seem a proper setting for the story of a crime. During the
war she had often stood in this window thinking of Jack Hereford and
his friend flying over the enemy’s lines. She had looked forward with
interest to seeing and knowing this brave man. How little she had
imagined there would ever be a moment like this!
How cruel Ralph’s need of money must have been in order to have brought
him so low as this! Jack had told her that Ramsay was as poor as a
rat--with never a cent in his pocket--but Ralph himself had told her
more that very afternoon when she had seen in the bitterness on his
face a record of his cruel life.
Then he had acknowledged being a castaway and a vagabond. Had he not
called himself an adventurer? The fact that he had rushed out of the
house was against him. She did not believe that he would come here, and
if he did not, she would keep his miserable secret as she would keep
secret his kisses which she could not efface.
At the sound of steps on the veranda she went hurriedly to the window
to open it herself. As she turned the handle of the French window,
Ramsay came in, dressed just as he was when he had gone out that
morning to fetch the grapes, in white flannel and white shoes. Her
first expression was maternal as she saw him.
“You will catch a terrible cold. You must be frightfully cold! I am
going to fetch you something to drink. There is whisky in the smoking
room.”
Ramsay’s face was white and drawn. He came out in the room only a
little beyond the window, his back against the red and gold Renaissance
curtain. It framed him with its long lines falling behind him. He
seemed to stand between in the folds.
“Please!” he said. “Don’t get me anything.”
He might have been embroidered on the satin of the curtains. He was
moveless and beautiful in his pallor and silence; nevertheless he was
only a modern figure, a modern man.
“How could you? How could you?” she breathed. “I did not think you
would come to-night and yet I hoped you would”--and she felt her voice
desert her--“and explain.”
He repeated the word “explain” with a laugh.
“I came back because I wanted to see you--for no other reason.”
She interrupted him with a passionate gesture as though she would
dismiss her memories and his.
“To see _me_ again! _What_ can this matter?” In spite of herself she
cried, “How horrible! How horrible!” and she covered her face.
He understood that she hated herself because he had taken her in
his arms. He looked quietly at her from his greater height, and his
expression did not indicate that all day he had been wandering like a
hunted animal.