Two weeks after she left the office her feet took her back to it, as if
by volition of their own. The familiar walls, covered with photographs
of alfalfa fields and tract maps painted with red ink, closed around
her like the walls of home. Hutchinson sat smoking at his desk; nothing
had changed. She said that she had only dropped in for a moment. How
was business? Her eye automatically noted the squares of red on the
maps. "Hello! That three-cornered piece by Sycamore Slough's gone! Who
sold it?"
"Watson," said Hutchinson. "He's uncovered a gold mine in the
Healdsburg country, selling the farmers hand over fist. Last week he
brought down a prospect who--" She heard the story to its end, capped
it with one of her own, and two hours had passed before she realized it.
In another week it had become her habit to drop in at the office every
time she came down town, to discuss Hutchinson's difficulties with him,
even on occasion to help him handle a sale. Business prospects were
not brightening; the prune market was disrupted by the European War,
orchardists were panic stricken; already a formless, darkening shadow
hung over men's minds. In any case she had no intention of going back
into business; she told herself that she detested it. And she continued
to go to the office.
Hutchinson awaited her one day with a bit of news. A man named MacAdams
had been telephoning; he was coming to the office; he wanted to see
her. "MacAdams?" she repeated. "Odd--I seem to remember the name."
MacAdams came in five minutes later, and the sight of his square,
deeply lined face, the deep-sunken eyes under bushy gray brows, brought
back to her vividly all the details of her first sale. She met him with
an out-stretched hand, which MacAdams ignored. "I'd like a few words
with you, miss."
She led him into the inner office, closed the door, made him sit down.
He sat upright, gnarled hands on his knees, and badly, in simple words,
laid his case before her. The land she had sold him was no good. It
was hard-pan land. After he bought it he had saved his money for a
year and moved to that land. "They told me I could make the payments
from the crops." He had leveled the forty acres, checked it, seeded it
to alfalfa. The alfalfa had begun to die the second year. That fall
he plowed it up and sowed grain. He made enough from that to pay for
seed and meet the water-tax. In the spring he and his boy had planted
beans. The boy had cultivated them, and he had worked out, making money
enough for food. The irrigation ditch broke; they could get no water
for the beans when they needed it. The beans had died. He was two years
behind in his payments; he could not meet the interest; he owed a
hundred dollars in grocery bills.
"I put three thousand dollars into that land. I went to see your firm
about it. They said they would give me more time to pay the rest if I
would keep up the interest. But I want no more farming; I'm done. They
can have the land. It's no good on God's earth. I'm blaming nobody,
miss. A man that is a fool is a fool. But I want back some of the
money, so I can move my family to the city and live till I get a job.
It is no more than justice, and I come to ask you for it."
She heard him to the end, one hand supporting her cheek, the other
drawing aimless pencil marks on the desk blotter. His request was
hopeless, she knew; even if Clark had wanted to return the money, it
had gone long ago in overhead and in payments to the owners of the
land. No one could be compelled to return any part of the payment
MacAdams had made on the contract he had signed. Clearly before her
eyes rose the picture of the little tract office, the smoky oil lamp,
Nichols in his chair, and she herself awaiting the word from MacAdams'
lips that would decide her fate and Bert's. Parrot-like words, repeated
many times, resaid themselves. "I'm sorry. Of course you know that
in any large tract of land there will be a few poor pieces. I acted
in perfectly good faith; you saw the land, examined it--" She met
MacAdams's eyes. "I'll give back all the money I made on it," she said.
She wrote a check for six hundred dollars, blotted it carefully, handed
it to him. His stern face was as tremulous as water blown upon by the
wind, but he said nothing, shaking her hand with a force that hurt and
going away quickly with the check. After the door closed behind him
she remembered that she had got only three hundred dollars from the
sale. The remainder had gone to cover Bert's debts. At this, shaken by
emotions, she laughed aloud.
"Well, anyway, now you'll have plenty to do!" she said to herself. "Now
you'll get out and scurry for money to live on!" She felt a momentary
chill of panic, but there was exhilaration in it.
She would not return to selling land. Her determination was reinforced
by the possibility that if she did she would find herself penniless
before she had made a sale. No, she must earn money in some other way.
She walked slowly home, wrapped in abstraction, searching her mind
for an idea. It was like gazing at the blankness of a cloudless sky,
but her self-confidence did not waver. All about her men no wiser, no
better equipped than she, were making money.
Sitting at the walnut desk in her sunny living-room she drew a sheet
of paper before her and prepared to take stock of her equipment. Her
thoughts became clearer when they were written. But after looking for
some time at the blank sheet, she began carefully to draw interlacing
circles upon it. There seemed nothing to write.
She was twenty-six years old. She had been working for eight years.
Telegraphing was out of the question; she would not go back to that.
Her four years of selling land had brought her nothing but a knowledge
of human minds, a certain cleverness in handling them, and a distaste
for doing it. And advertising. She could write advertisements; she
had records in dollars and cents that proved it. What she needed was
an idea, something novel, striking and soundly valuable, with which
to attack an advertiser. Her mind remained quite blank. Against the
background of the swaying rose-colored curtains picture after picture
rose before her vague eyes. But no idea.
Suddenly she thought of Paul, of her plan of going to Ripley, now
demolished. She could not work there; if Paul suspected her difficulty
he would insist upon helping her. He would be hurt by her refusal,
however carefully she tried not to hurt him. "Oh, you little idiot!
You have made a mess of things!" she said.
Half-formed thoughts began to scamper frantically through her mind.
This was no way to face a problem, she knew. She would think no more
about it until to-morrow. Smiling a little, she began a letter to Paul,
a long, whimsical letter, warmed with tenderness, saying nothing and
saying it charmingly. An hour later, rereading it and finding it good,
she folded it into its envelope and put a tiny kiss upon the flap,
smiling at herself.
Lest her perplexities come back to break the contentment of her
mood, she barricaded herself against the silence of the house with a
magazine. It was the "Pacific Coast," a San Francisco publication of
particular interest to her because of its articles on California land.
She had once wished to write a series of reading-matter advertisements
to be printed in it, but Clark had overruled her idea, favoring display
type.
She was buried in a story of the western mining camps when from the
blank depths of her mind the idea she had wanted sprang with the
suddenness of an explosion. What chance contact of buried memories had
produced it she could not tell, but there it was. As she considered
it, it appeared now commonplace and worthless, now scintillating with
bright possibilities. In the end, composing herself to sleep on the
star-lit porch, she decided to test it.
Early the next afternoon she arrived at the San Francisco offices of
the "Pacific Coast" and asked to speak to the circulation manager.
She was impressed by the atmosphere of dignity and restraint in the
large, bland offices. Sunshine streamed through big windows over tidy
desks and filing-cabinets; girls moved about quietly, carrying sheaves
of typewritten matter in smooth, ringless hands; even the click of
typewriters was subdued, like the sound of well-bred voices. Her
experiences of newspaper offices had not prepared her for this, and her
pulses quickened at this glimpse of a strange, uncharted world.
The circulation manager was a disappointment. He was young, and
desirous of concealing the fact. His manner, a shade too assertive,
betrayed suppressed self-distrust; being doubtful of his own ability
he sought to reassure himself by convincing others of it. Had she been
selling him land, she would have played upon this shaky egotism, but
here the weapon turned against her. He was prepared to demonstrate his
efficiency by swiftly dismissing her.
Drawing upon all her resources of salesmanship, she presented her plan.
She wished to organize a crew of subscription solicitors and cover the
state, section by section. She would interview chambers of commerce,
boards of trade, business men, and farmers, gathering material for an
article on local conditions; she would get free publicity from the
newspapers; she would stimulate interest in the "Pacific Coast."
"Every one likes to read about himself, and next he likes to read
about his town. I will see that every man and woman in the territory
knows that the "Pacific Coast" will run articles about his own
local interests. Then the solicitors will come along and take his
subscription. The solicitors will work on commission; the only
expense will be my salary and the cost of writing the articles. And
the articles will be good magazine features, in addition to their
circulation value."
His smile was pityingly superior.
"My dear young lady, if I used our columns for schemes like that!"
She perceived that she had encountered a system of ethics unknown
to her. "We are not running a cheap booster's magazine, angling for
subscriptions." And he pointed out that every article must interest a
hundred thousand subscribers, while an article on one section of the
state appealed only to the local interest. The talk became an argument
on this point.
"But towns have characters, like people. Every town in California is
full of stories, atmosphere, romance, color. Why, you couldn't write
the character of one of them without interesting every reader of your
magazine!"
He ended the interview with a challenge.
"Well, you bring me one article that will pass one of our readers and
I may consider the scheme." He turned to a pile of letters, and his
gesture indicated his satisfaction in dismissing her so neatly and
finally.
It left a sting that pricked her pride and made her nerves tingle.
She was passed outward through the suave atmosphere of the offices,
and every shining wood surface affected her like a smile of conscious
superiority.
She went to see Mr. Clark, who welcomed her with regrets that she had
left the organization, and at her suggestion readily promised her a
place in his office at a moderate salary. But to take it seemed a
self-confession of failure. Mr. Clark's offer was left open, and she
returned to San José smarting with resentful humiliation.
The sun was low when she alighted at the station. Amber-colored light
lay over the green of St. James Park, and the long street beyond
glowed with the dull, warm tone of weathered brick. The tall windows
and gabled roofs of the old business blocks threw back the flames of
the level sun-rays. In the gray light below them the bell of El Camino
Real stood voiceless at the corner of the old Alameda beside a red
fire-alarm box, and around it scores of farmers' automobiles fringed
the wide cement sidewalks.
Here, within the memory of men yet living, fields of wild mustard had
hidden hundreds of grazing cattle and vaqueros, riding down to them
from the foot-hills, had vanished in seas of yellow bloom; here the
padres had trudged patiently on the road from Santa Clara to Mission
San José; here pioneers had broken the raw soil and lined the cup of
the valley with golden wheat fields, and Blaine had come in the heyday
of his popularity, counseling orchards.
Now, mile after mile to the edge of the blue hills, prune-trees and
apricots and cherries stood in trim rows, smooth boulevards hummed with
the passing of motor-cars, and where the vaqueros had broken the wild
mustard, San José stood, the throbbing heart of all these arteries
reaching into past and present and future.
"And he says there's nothing of interest here!" she cried. "Oh, if only
I could write it! If I could write one tenth of it!"
Midnight found her sitting before her typewriter, disheveled, hot-eyed,
surrounded by crumpled sheets of paper, pondering over sentences,
discarding paragraphs, by turns glowing with satisfaction and chilled
by hopelessness. "I could write an advertisement about it," she
thought. "I could interest a buyer. Magazine articles are different.
But human beings are all alike. Interest them. I've got to interest
them. If I can just make it human, make them see--Oh, what an idiot
that man was!" Absorbed in her attempt to express the spirit of San
José, she still felt burning within her a rage against him. "I'll show
him, anyway, that there are some things he doesn't see!"
Next morning she read her work and found it worthless.
"I'll write it like a letter," she thought, and pages poured easily
from the typewriter. She spent the next day slashing black pencil-marks
through paragraphs, shifting sentences, altering words. The intricacy
of the work fascinated her; it allured like an embroidery pattern,
challenged like a land sale, roused all her energies.
When she could do no more, she read and re-read the finished article.
She thought it hopelessly stupid; she thought it as good as some she
had read; a sentence glinted at her like a ray of light, and again it
faded into insignificance. She did not know what she thought about it.
The memory of that irritating young man decided her. "It may be done
absurdly, but it will prove my point. There is something here to write
about." She sent it to him.
After five empty days, during which she struggled in a chaos of
indecisions, she tore open an envelope with the "Pacific Coast"
imprint. "Perhaps that plan will go through, after all," she thought.
She read a note asking her to call, a note signed "A. C. Hayden,
Editor."
The next afternoon she was in his office. It was a quiet room, lined
with filled bookcases, furnished with comfortable chairs and a huge
table loaded with proofs and manuscripts piled in orderly disorder. Mr.
Hayden himself gave the same impression of leisurely efficiency; Helen
felt that he accomplished a great deal of work without haste, smiling.
He was not hurried; he was quite willing to discuss her circulation
scheme, listening sympathetically, pointing out the reasons why it
was not advisable. Her article lay on the desk. It had brought her a
pleasant interview. After all, there was no reason why she should not
accept Clark's offer.
"Now this," Mr. Hayden said, unfolding her manuscript. "We can use
this, simply as a story, if you want to sell it to us. With the right
illustrations and a few changes it will make a very good feature. Our
rates, of course--" Helen had made no sound, but some quality in her
breathless silence interrupted him. He looked at her questioningly.
"You don't mean--I can write?"
He was amused.
"People do, you know. In fact, most people do--or try. You'd realize
that if you were a magazine editor. Have you never written before?"
"Well--reader advertisements and letters, of course. I haven't thought
of really writing, not since I was a school girl." She was dazzled.
"Advertisement! That accounts for it. You cramp your style here and
there. But you can write. You have an original viewpoint; you write
with a sense of direction, and you pack in human interest--human
interest's always good. And you know the values of words."
"When you're paying three dollars and eighty cents an inch for
space you do think about them!" she laughed. His words revealed the
unmeasured stretches of her ignorance in this new field, but the blood
throbbed in her temples. Her mind became a whirl of ideas; she saw
the world as a gold mine, crammed with things to write about. Eagerly
attentive, she listened to Mr. Hayden's criticisms of the manuscript.
Her lead was too long. "You spar around before you get to the point.
The story really begins here." His pencil hovered over the page. "If
you don't object to our making changes?"
"Oh, please do I want to learn."
An hour went by, and another. Mr. Hayden was interested in her opinions
on all subjects; he led her to talk of land selling, of advertising, of
the many parts of California that she knew. He suggested a series of
articles similar to the one he held in his hand. He would be glad to
consider them if she would write them. If she had other ideas, would
she submit them?
She left the office with a check in her purse, and her mind was filled
with rainbow visions. She saw a story in every newsboy she met, ideas
clothed with romance and color jostled each other for place in her
mind, and the world seemed a whirling ball beneath her feet. For the
first time since the interview with MacAdams she longed to rush to
Paul, to share with him her glittering visions.