I
MISS ANN AUSTIN came briskly into her little cupboard of a room at
the back of the _Evening Planet_ office. She hung up her hat and coat,
opened her rolltop desk, put her small handbag carefully in a drawer,
and looked at herself in a greenish mirror that hung secretly on a hook
in the recess under the pigeonholes. She took the rubber hood off her
typewriter, poured three paper cupfuls of drinking water on the potted
geranium on the windowledge, wound up the cheap clock on top of the
desk, and moved it forward ten minutes to compensate for what it had
lost during the night. Now she was ready for work. As she wound up the
clock, the usual thought occurred to her--when would she be able to buy
herself the handsome little wrist watch she coveted? There were a lot
of them in the jeweller's shop on Park Row, and she admired them every
morning on her way to the office. But when one is supporting one's self
and an invalid mother in an uptown apartment, and has to pay for a woman
to come in during the day to lend a hand, all on fifty dollars a week,
in an era of post-bellum prices, wrist watches have to wait. However,
as Ann made the daily correction in her laggard clock she used to say to
herself: “There's a better time coming.” She was not devoid of humour,
you see.
Then the office boy would bring in the big pile of morning mail,
grinning as he laid it on the pullout slide of her desk. He may be
excused for grinning, because Ann was the kind of creature who would
bring a smile to the surliest face. She was just a nice size, with a
face that was both charming and sensible, and merry brown eyes (when
it wasn't too close to the first of the month). Also, that pile of mail
_was_ rather amusing. Those letters, so many of them written on cheap
pink or blue stationery and addressed in unsophisticated handwriting,
were not directed to Miss Ann Austin, but to “Cynthia,” and the office
boy knew pretty well the kind of messages that were in them. For Ann,
under the pseudonym of “Cynthia,” conducted the _Planet's_ department of
Advice to the Lovelorn, and daily several score of puzzled or distracted
beings bared their hearts to her. The pile of letters was growing
bigger, too. The _Planet_, which was not a very flourishing paper just
at that time, had started the Advice to the Lovelorn department a few
months before, and had put Ann in charge of it because she had done so
well writing sob stories. It was beginning to “pull” quite surprisingly
as a circulation feature, especially since her smiling little picture,
vignetted in a cut with a border of tiny hearts, had been put at
the head of the column. Under the cut was the legend: “Cynthia, a
Sympathetic Adviser in Matters of the Heart.” Ann didn't know whether to
be pleased or not at the growing popularity of her feature. This was not
quite the kind of thing she had hoped for when she entered the newspaper
world. But--the more letters there were from the lovelorn, the sooner
she might get that needed raise.
With a little sigh she got out her penknife, began slitting the
envelopes, ceased to be Ann Austin and became Cynthia, the sage and
gentle arbiter over her troubled parliament of love.
It was a task that required no small discretion and tact, because
Cynthia, whatever her private misgivings, tried to perform it with some
honest idealism. In the first place, the letters that were obviously
merely humorous, or were amorous attempts to inveigle her into private
correspondence, were discarded. Then the letters to be used in the next
day's column had to be selected, and laid aside to be printed with her
comment on the ethical or sociological problems involved. The remaining
letters had all to be answered, and data noted down that would be useful
in compiling the pamphlet “1001 Problems of Courtship” that the managing
editor insisted on her preparing. He said it would be great circulation
dope. Ann didn't care much for the managing editor, Mr. Sikes. He had a
way of coming into her room, closing the door behind him, leaning over
her desk, and saying: “Well, how's little Miss Cupid?” If it hadn't been
for that habit of his, Ann would have spoken to him about a raise before
now. But she had an uneasy feeling that it would not be pleasing to put
herself in the position of asking him favours. She would have been still
more disturbed if she had known that some of the boys in the city room
used to talk about “Cupid and Sikey” when they saw him visit her room.
They said it angrily, because Ann was a general office favourite. Even
the coloured elevator man had brought his wooing problems to her one
day, wanting to be reassured as to his technique.
It is all very well for you to scoff, superior reader, but letters
such as Ann had to read every morning bring an honest pang to an
understanding heart; particularly when that heart is in collaboration
with twenty-two years of bright, brown-eyed, high-spirited girlhood.
Perhaps you don't realize how many of us are young and ignorant and at
work in offices, and absorbed, out of working hours, in the universal
passion. A good many make shift to be cynical and worldly-wise in
public, but who knows how ravishingly sentimental we are in private?
Some say that Doctor Freud didn't tell the half of it. As that waggish
poet Keith Preston has remarked,
Love, lay thy phobias to rest,
Inhibit thy taboo!
We twain shall share, forever blest,
A complex built for two!
A complex built for two was the ambition of most of Ann's
correspondents; but mainly her letters exhibited the seamy side of
Love's purple mantle. You see, when lovers are perfectly happy, they
don't write to the papers about it. And when she pondered gravely
over “Brokenhearted's” letter saying that she has just learned that a
perfectly splendid fellow she is so infatuated with has a wife and three
children in Detroit; or over “Puzzled's” inquiry as to whether she is
“a bum sport” because she wouldn't let the dark young man kiss her
good-night, she sometimes said to herself that Napoleon was right.
Napoleon, you remember, remarked that Love causes more unhappiness than
anything else in the world. And then she would turn to her typewriter,
and put under “Puzzled's” inquiry:
_No, “Puzzled,” do not let him kiss you unless you are betrothed. If any
one is a “bum sport” it is he for wanting to do so. If he “always kisses
the girls good-night when he has had a good time,” he is not your sort.
A man that does not respect a girl before marriage will certainly not
respect her afterward._
After she had typed these replies she always hastily took the paper out
of her typewriter and tucked it away in her desk. She did not like the
idea of Mr. Sikes coming in and reading it over her shoulder, as he had
done once. That was the time she had used the quotation “Pains of Love
are sweeter far than all other pleasures are” in answering “Desolate.”
The managing editor had repeated the verse in a way that both angered
and alarmed her.
This particular morning, among the other letters was one that interested
her both by the straightforward simplicity of its statement and by the
clear, vigorous handwriting on sensible plain notepaper. It ran thus:
_Dear Cynthia:_
_I am a young business man, very much in love, and I need your help. I
have fallen in love with a girl who does not know me. I do not even know
her name but I know her by sight, and I know where she works. She looks
like the only one for me, but I don't want to do anything disrespectful.
Would it be a mistake for me to call at her office and try to get a
chance to meet her? Do you think she would be offended? She looks very
adorable. Please tell me honestly what you think._
_Respectfully yours,_
_Sincerity._
Wearied by the maunderings of many idiotic flappers and baby vamps, this
appeal attracted her. She put it into the column for the following day,
writing underneath it:
_You never can tell, “Sincerity”! It all depends upon you. If you are
the right kind of man, she ought not to be offended. Why not take a
chance? Faint heart never won fair lady._
It was trying enough, Ann used to think, to have to pore over the
troubles of her lovelorn clients on paper; but the worst times were when
they came to call on her at the office. Fortunately this did not happen
very often, for the stricken maidens and young Lochinvars who make up
the chief support of such columns as hers are safely and busily shut up
among typewriters and filing cases during the daytime; their wounds do
not begin to burn intolerably until about five-thirty p.m. But now and
then some forlorn and baffled creature would find his or her way to
“Cynthia” and ask her advice. She would listen sympathetically, apply
such homely febrifuge as her inexperienced but wise heart suggested to
her, and after the patient had gone she would add the case to her list
of 1001 Problems. The material for the pamphlet was growing rapidly.
One morning, while the managing editor was in her room asking her how
soon the booklet would be ready, the office boy brought in a card
neatly engraved _Mr. Arthur Caldwell_. Now as a rule Cynthia did not see
masculine visitors, because (after one or two trying experiences) she
had found that they were inclined to transfer to her the heart that
someone else had bruised. But in this case she welcomed the caller
because Mr. Sikes was being annoyingly facetious. He had looked over her
laboriously gathered data for the 1001 Problems, and had said: “Well,
you're getting to be quite an experienced little girl in these matters,
hey?” He had seemed disposed to linger on the topic with pleasure.
Therefore Cynthia told the office boy to send Mr. Caldwell in, though
the name meant nothing to her. Mr. Sikes went out, and the caller was
introduced.
Mr. Caldwell proved to be a young man, quite as nice-looking as the
collar-advertising young men without being so desperately handsome.
Cynthia liked him from the first glance. There was something that seemed
very genuine about his soft collar and his candid, clean-shaven face and
the little brown brief-case he carried. He had on brown woollen socks,
too, she noticed, in one of those quick feminine observations. He seemed
very embarrassed, and his face suddenly went ruby red.
“Is this Cynthia?” he said.
“Yes,” said Ann, pushing aside a mass of lovelorn correspondence, and
wondering what the trouble could be.
“My name's Caldwell,” he said. “Look here, I suppose you'll think me an
awful idiot, but I wanted to ask your advice. I--I wrote you a letter
the other day, and your answer in the column made me think that perhaps
you wouldn't mind giving me some help. I wrote that letter signed
'Sincerity'.”
He was obviously ill at ease, and Ann tried to help him out.
“I remember the letter perfectly,” she said. “Did you take my advice?”
“Well, I'm a bit uncertain about it,” he said.
“I just wanted to explain to you a little more fully, and see what
you think. You see I happened to see this girl one day, going into her
office. I suppose the idea about love at first sight is all exploded,
but I had a hunch as soon as I saw her that----Oh, well, that I would
like to know her. I've seen her going in and out of the building, but
she has never seen me, never even heard of me. I don't know any one who
can introduce me to her, and I can't just walk up to her and tell her
I'm crazy about her. They don't do that except in Shakespeare. I don't
know much about girls and I thought maybe you could suggest some way in
which I could meet her without frightening her.”
Ann pondered. She liked the young man's way of putting his problem, and
it was plain from his genuine embarrassment that he was sincere.
“I'd love to help you, if I could,” she said. “It seems to me that the
only way to go about it is to arrange some business with the firm she
works for, and try to meet her that way. Couldn't that be done?”
“She's secretary to one of the big bugs in the Telephone Company,” he
said. “I'm in the publishing business. I don't see any way in which I
could fake up a business connection there. The worst of it is, there may
be a dozen fellows in love with her already, for all I know. I suppose I
might get a job with the Telephone Company, but by the time I had worked
up far enough to have an excuse for going into the vice-president's
office where she works, someone else might have married her.” He
laughed, a boyish, ingratiating chuckle.
“It does seem pretty hard,” said Ann. “I don't know what to say.” She
had a mental picture of the unknown fair one, going in and out of the
big Telephone Company's building on Dey Street, unaware of the admiring
glances of this bashful admirer. “I'll bet the men she knows aren't half
as nice as he is,” she said to herself.
“I happen to know that she reads your column,” said Caldwell. “I suppose
there isn't any way I could get in touch with her through that?”
“If there's any legitimate way I can help,” Ann said, “I'll be glad to.
But I hardly see what I can do.”
“Well, thanks awfully,” he said. “If I get a chance to meet her, will
you let me come in again and tell you about it? Perhaps you would let
me mention your name as a reference, in regard to my respectability I
mean?”
“Surely you can give her better references than that? You see, I don't
know so very much about you, Mr. Caldwell.”
“In matters like this,” he said, “I guess you're the Big Authority. And
by the way, do you ever do any book reviewing? I work for Fawcett and
Company, the publishers, and we'd like immensely to have your comment on
some of our love stories. Can I send you some books?”
“I can't promise to review them,” said Ann, rather pleased, because this
seemed to her a way to earn a little extra money. “But I'll speak to the
literary editor, and we'll see.”
“Suppose I send them to your home address,” said Caldwell. “I know what
a newspaper office is, if I send them here someone else might snitch
them. Give me your street number, and you'll be spared the trouble of
taking them home to read.”
“That's very kind of you,” said Ann. “Miss Ann Austin, 527 West 150th
Street. Well, you let me know what happens about your fair lady. I wish
you all sorts of luck!”
When Arthur Caldwell got outside the office, he looked down Park Row to
where the great Telephone Building rose up behind the brown silhouette
of St. Paul's.
“Caldwell,” he said to himself, “you're an infernal liar! But it pays!
I'll figure out some way. While there's life there's dope.”
He set out for the subway, but paused again to meditate.
“Ann Austin!” he said. “By George, she's a queen.”