To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the
suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper
story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor,
no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story--no
anything.
But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the
reporters' room of the _Morning Beacon_, I will repay the favor by
keeping strictly my promises set forth above.
I was doing space-work on the _Beacon_, hoping to be put on a salary.
Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at
the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, _Congressional
Records_, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the
city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings
about its streets. My income was not regular.
One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in
the mechanical department--I think he had something to do with the
pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands
were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five
and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red
whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He
was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous
borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One
dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the
Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H2O that collateral will
show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the
other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of
lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful
in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.
This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as
a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly
accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least
an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to
write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.
"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes
it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard
and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of
misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.
"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look
and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his
high-growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.
"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and
inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing
them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I
continued, "to meet a want--a hiatus--a demand--a need--an exigency--a
requirement of exactly five dollars."
I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of
the dollars on the spot.
"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I
thought you'd like to get put onto a good story," he went on. "I've
got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column
at least. It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably
cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out
of it myself."
I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past
favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough
to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.
"What is the story?" I asked, poising my pencil with a finely
calculated editorial air.
"I'll tell you," said Tripp. "It's a girl. A beauty. One of the
howlingest Amsden's Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew--
violets in their mossy bed--and truck like that. She's lived on Long
Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against
her on Thirty-fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River
ferry. I tell you, she's a beauty that would take the hydrogen out
of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and
asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could
find _George Brown in New York City!_ What do you think of that?
"I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young
farmer named Dodd--Hiram Dodd--next week. But it seems that George
Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had
greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make
his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg,
and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the
scratch Ada--her name's Ada Lowery--saddles a nag and rides eight
miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for
the city. Looking for George, you know--you understand about women--
George wasn't there, so she wanted him.
"Well, you know, I couldn't leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson.
I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say:
'George Brown?--why, yes--lemme see--he's a short man with light-blue
eyes, ain't he? Oh yes--you'll find George on One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He's bill-clerk in
a saddle-and-harness store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful
she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like
Greenburg--a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine
summer visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes
from. But, say--you ought to see her!
"What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning.
And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket
except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was
eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on
Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in
soak for a dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll
show you the house."
"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a
story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes
away girls from Long Island."
The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously
from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his
answer with one shaking forefinger.
"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make?
You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe
the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling
in a few stickfuls of funny business--joshing the Long Islanders
about being green, and, well--you know how to do it. You ought to
get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it'll cost you only about
four dollars. You'll make a clear profit of eleven."
"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously.
"One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two
dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."
"And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental
calculation.
"One dollar to me," said Tripp. "For whiskey. Are you on?"
I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing
again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck
of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became
shiningly moist.
"Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that
this girl has got to be sent home to-day--not to-night nor to-morrow,
but to-day? I can't do anything for her. You know, I'm the janitor
and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you
could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money
on general results. But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to get
back home before night?"
And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation
known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a
weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the
bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery.
But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be
forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would
indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and
gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.
Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted
me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I
paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and
the smallest minted coin were strangers.
Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red-brick
boarding-house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a
rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog.
I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming
footsteps of landladies.
"Give me one of the dollars--quick!" he said.
The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white
eyes--they were white, I say--and a yellow face, holding together at
her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp
thrust the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us
entry.
"She's in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack
upon us.
In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table
weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty.
Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched
a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the
senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been
a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced,
and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naïve
interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a
crawling beetle or a frog.
Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread
upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood.
But he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned
high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and
linen.
I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the
glade between his tangled hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I
felt ashamed of having been introduced as his friend in the presence
of so much beauty in distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct
the ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his
actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon me as
material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope of extracting from
me his whiskey dollar.
"My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said Tripp, "will tell
you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He's a reporter, and he can
hand out the talk better than I can. That's why I brought him with
me." (O Tripp, wasn't it the _silver_-tongued orator you wanted?)
"He's wise to a lot of things, and he'll tell you now what's best
to do."