THIS MARRYING
BY
MARGARET CULKIN BANNING
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
VIOLA ROSEBORO
THIS MARRYING
CHAPTER I
“You should have been a bridesmaid,” said Aunt Caroline. “Everyone was
so surprised that you weren’t. And the yellow would have been so
becoming with you so dark.”
Horatia smiled and her smile carried no regrets for her lost
opportunity. Everyone, as her aunt said, had been surprised at her
refusal to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her friend. But with a
quick reminiscent glance back at the ceremony, Horatia congratulated
herself again on the decision that had held out against the requests of
Edna and the expostulations of her aunt. She recalled the hurried fussy
little ceremony, and the curious people, the space reserved in the front
parlor with its tall cathedral candles, its lavish ten yards of white
satin ribbon and the rose pink prayer rug. A faint odor of candles and
coffee and perfume clung to the memory. In the minds of her aunt and
West Park these things were vastly suitable, just as to them Edna
Wallace was still her “best” friend, because they had played together as
children and gone through High School together. But Horatia realized
that her college experience and her four years of absence from West
Park had made great gaps between her and the bride of last night as well
as between her and this middle-aged aunt and uncle with whom she sat at
breakfast. She looked just then as if not only yellow but any color
would become her. She was fairly tall and well made and carried herself
with the easy distinctive swing that comes from perfect health and no
corsets. Her hair was brown and heavy and shaded into the brown of her
eyes to add still another tone to the whole that her aunt characterized
as “you so dark.” Her clothes were simple for she scorned on principle
all the minor affectations of dress and quick changes of fashion, but
she had an eye for color and line which developed gowns which were
sometimes beautiful and sometimes startling. Not that there was an
unlimited number of them. Uncle George was generous but generous by West
Park standards and by Aunt Caroline’s expenditures, and Aunt Caroline
still considered fifty dollars a scandalous price for a suit or cloak.
Horatia never grumbled about money or about clothes. This morning she
was dressed for the City and her satin blouse and slim tailored suit set
off her young health perfectly. Even her aunt and uncle were conscious
of fresh energy at the breakfast table.
“I didn’t want to be a bridesmaid,” she answered. “It always makes me
seasick to try to walk to music.”
“Horatia’s waiting,” said Uncle George, over the top of his newspaper,
“until she can be the chief performer.”
Horatia smiled at him. “You want to get rid of me, don’t you, and you
don’t care what I take. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m going
to town this morning to get a job. When I try that for a while I’ll
decide whether I want to get married or not.”
“Get a job? What do you want a job for? You want to stay home with your
aunt and me now.” Uncle George went so far as to put his paper down and
repeat himself. “What do you want to do that for?”
“Earn money.”
He reached for his check book in all seriousness, but Horatia leaned
over and put her hand on it.
“Truly I want to earn it. Everyone earns money nowadays, unless she is
feeble-minded--or married. I don’t particularly want money just now
anyway. I still have some of that last fifty. But I want to work. All
the people I know are either married or going to be or working. I must
get in some class. Of course I don’t mean to leave you. I’d be here
nights, you see.”
“They’d probably find a position for you at the High School if you feel
that way,” said Aunt Caroline, with the consciousness of being an
important member of the community to whom even educational gateways were
glad to open.
“Oh--_teach_,” said Horatia. “I don’t want to teach!”
Uncle George rose with heavy dignity.
“Well--let me know when you get broke.” He went out of the room with
masculine indifference to these whims and in the knowledge that Horatia
was only marking time in her own way until the inevitable happened.
She’d marry. Of course she’d marry. And chuckling a little, he went down
the street.
Aunt Caroline was more inquiring. She rose from the table, not being one
to linger and keep the “help” waiting. But she followed her niece into
the hall.
“Is it this social work you want to do?” she asked, remembering dimly
things she had heard of new standpoints.
“Why, I don’t think so. I thought I’d try to get on a newspaper. And if
that doesn’t work, I cut some ads out of the paper.”
“You don’t mean you’d do housework!” gasped her aunt to whom
advertisements in newspapers meant “girl wanted for general housework.”
Horatia laughed in pure joy. It was one of those rare free moments which
come at the beginning of new work and new adventures and she enjoyed
shaking up Aunt Caroline.
“Not--especially.” Then from the foot of the steps she turned to wave
back at the stout lady on the doorstep.
“Don’t fret,” she called. “Home for dinner.”
“Everyone,” she sang to herself as she went down the hill, “has the
right to shock an older person once in a while. It’s the breath of
youth. And the old dears really love it. So long as you are
respectable--they love it.”
As she turned the corner she looked back for a moment at the house she
had left, dramatizing her new freedom and the house too as a sober
symbol of what she was so gladly leaving. The Grant house stood high on
a hill overlooking the lake. It was built of blackish stone, which at
one time had been the material of wealth and dignity in the city, and it
still looked down on the stucco and plaster new houses which clustered
beneath it, with a kind of glum faith in its superiority. But the
illusion was its own. It awed no one any more, least of all Horatia, who
had been brought up to respect it.
Inside were rooms papered in browns and streaked green and filled with
walnut furniture which had all the ugliness of an ugly outworn fashion
and yet none of the interest of antiques. There were several unsoftened
leather sofas--unsoftened because the Grants had never been a family to
“lie down in the daytime,” and the chairs were chairs--so many places to
sit down, but boasting neither beauty nor comfort. At the windows
curtains of imitation Brussels lace gave the finishing touch to the
unimaginative furnishings. They too were stiff and artificial, like the
stone dog who sat so grimly on the terrace outside. Horatia had called
the place home since she was six years old. She had no quarrel with it
but it had ceased to interest her. It stood still--impassive--and she,
like the breeze and the sunlight, was moving.
It was a clear morning--a bright morning, one of the days on which
someone always should start out to seek a fortune. There was energy in
the wind and good luck in the sunlight and romance in the face of
everyone she met. Even on the way to the suburban train, though she knew
nearly everyone she met, they all seemed imbued with new spirit and more
interesting qualities. She met Miss Pettikin, and saw not the shabby
little dressmaker but the heroine of some blighted romance. She saw the
Reverend Williams, not as the man who had read the marriage service so
stupidly the night before but as a man with a holy mission. She saw Joe
Peter, the neighborhood gardener, and he became Labor just as Mr. Jeffry
panting on his way to the train became Capital. She saw herself as a
lovely and interesting young woman in whom everyone on the train was
interested and she hoped that behind every newspaper lurked a man with a
brain, worth her knowing. The world was full of life and interest and
she was going to get her share of it. And as the train swayed and jerked
as only a suburban train can do, she pulled out her notebook and
speculated on her first adventure.
She had listed the newspapers with their addresses. There were four and
it was quite within possibility that one of them would want her. She had
several courses in journalism to her credit at the university and if
there was a vacancy in any office she meant to press her claims hard.
The mere idea of working stimulated her and as the train stopped at the
city station she pushed out with the hurrying crowd, almost feeling
already that she was one of those to whom being “on time” was a
necessity.
The newspaper offices were down near the water-front. Below the main
street of big shops and glittering restaurants, the streets became grey
and businesslike. Wholesale houses, impassive and undecorated, with
great trucks backed up before their entrances, dingy employment offices,
the repair shops of garages that fronted gaily on the other street, and
straggly buildings, without elevators, housing a multitude of little
businesses, lived on this street. A block above, the streets were
already filled with shoppers, looking in windows, loitering along,
wondering what they would do next. But on Market Street everyone seemed
to know where he was going and to be going there quickly. Horatia
hastened her own footsteps, though her time was all her own. It made her
feel less conspicuous.
_The Times_ was the morning paper and the presence of it on the
breakfast table all her life made Horatia feel more acquainted with it
than with the others. Besides her picture had appeared in it three times
after she had done something worth newspaper notice at the University,
and while she was vaguely amused at those reasons for going there first
she argued further that as it was the paper with the largest
circulation there might be more opportunities open. Its dinginess
surprised her. The offices were housed in a nondescript wooden building
and the manager’s office to which Horatia found herself referred by the
boy in the general office was reached by a worn stairway.
“He’s probably not in yet,” said the boy, “doesn’t get here until eleven
o’clock, usually.”
But Horatia’s luck was working. A stout, shirt-sleeved man looked her
over without getting up from his desk.
“We don’t take on women reporters except in the society department,” he
told her. “There’s to be a change there shortly. What experience have
you had?”
“No experience except journalism courses at the University.”
“They can’t teach newspaper work at any university,” growled the man.
“Can teach them more here in a week than they’d get in ten years at any
school, don’t care where it is. Leave your name and if anything does
turn up, or Miss Eliot--she’s society editor--needs help--I’ll have her
take it up with you. Of course you understand she wants hack work. We’ve
no room for essays, you know.”
Horatia looked him over without a blush at his semi-insolence.
“No--I don’t suppose you have,” she said, and her stock went up with her
tone. She left her name on the pad he pushed towards her and went out.
“Lucky there are three others,” she said. “I wouldn’t care for that
gentleman--nor yet his Miss Eliot. But I suppose you can’t choose. _The
Buzz-saw_ next.”
_The Buzz-saw_ was not subscribed to by the Grants. It was a murderous
little political journal, full of gossip, and it exposed scandals rather
than printed news. Its circulation was heavy and stray copies of it,
brought home by Uncle George, had made Horatia wonder a good deal about
it. She knew everyone read it, more or less under cover, and its
unorthodoxy troubled her not at all. If it were rotten it would be fun
to uncover its methods. So she toiled up another flight of stairs into a
much smaller office where the editor, a typist and two lean,
pipe-smoking reporters looked furtively amused at her appearance. She
took the scrutiny well. Quite unembarrassed in her own glances, she had
a way of putting herself in her own class immediately. It was impossible
to look at her, at her dress and her unaffected hat, and not know that
she meant to be quite impersonal. The reporters took their pipes to the
other corner and the editor straightened up a little to offer her a
chair and ask her business. When she told him he seemed to ruminate.
“What is your name?”
She told him and he seemed to connect it with Uncle George by a swift
mental gesture.
“George Grant--dry-goods?”
“His niece. I live with him.”
“Well.” He thought again and then leaned forward with a confidential air
that Horatia imagined him using habitually as he unearthed his scandals.
“We don’t take on girls. But I don’t say you couldn’t be useful to us.
If you could run a column of good gossipy stuff about the
swells--particularly the women, of course. Nothing that would let us in
for libel--well, I’d edit it anyway, of course. But the preliminary
stuff to these scandals--the first rumors of divorces and
elopements--particularly concerning women more or less in the public
eye. We don’t want stories about everyone. I could give you a list of
people to watch. You know--the Town Topics sort of thing. Get us a lot
more women readers.”
Horatia was enjoying herself.
“But how would I unearth these stories about people I don’t know?”
“You’d have to work around. A girl like you has got the----” (he fumbled
and decided to be a plain American) “the entry everywhere. You’d feel
around, listen to them talk, draw them out. There’s things a man can’t
do.”
“Yes,” agreed Horatia, wisely, “there are.”
“Now of course a thing like that would be a trial column. Might not work
out at all. Couldn’t be long-winded. And then, too, it isn’t worth an
awful lot. But a girl like you, living at home, doing it for experience
and pin-money, would realize that we couldn’t pay too much.”
His little eyes bored through her as he tried to feel her out. Horatia
felt suddenly disgusted.
“I’ll think it over,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m not sure I
could do just what you want, but I’ll think it over. And come in in a
day or so.”
The man seemed a little anxious to keep her and vaguely worried lest he
had said too much.
“Our little journal tries to tell the truth,” was his parting comment
and it followed Horatia sardonically down the stairs.
“You’re not an adventure,” thought Horatia, proceeding. “You’re a nasty,
open debauch. My chances are narrowing.”
They narrowed further. The _Evening Reporter_ was cleaner than the other
two, more brusque, more businesslike. She could not see the editor. They
needed no one. There remained the _Evening Journal_ and that Horatia
hardly knew by sight. She had bought a copy at the newsstand the other
day when she was getting addresses and making her plans. It was a
thinner sheet than the others and seemed to have a great deal of space
for semi-philosophical editorials. A kind of labor journal she
classified it and then felt that she had not been complete. It had
hinted at Socialism but it was not Socialist frankly. Horatia knew the
strong colors of Socialist publications, to a couple of which she
subscribed, just as a matter of being open-minded.
There was no buzz or stir about the office of _The Journal_. It was high
up in a kind of office building which fronted the lake, and its rooms
seemed to be very few. In one a couple of typewriting machines with
papers strewn about them were deserted. In the adjoining room, open in
spite of a “private” sign on the door, a big desk was also deserted. At
the back of the room a big window gave on the lake, ignoring the rush
and noise of the brown streets below. Horatia looked around for someone
and seeing nobody went to the window. She stood there, a little tired
and reflective, thinking of the queerness of being in such a spot
instead of in some big classroom or lecture hall or in the sedate
comfort of West Park. The adventure spirit was wearying a little. What
sort of places were these to see and feel life in? And how tawdry or how
conventional one might become. She thought of Edna, speeding away with
her husband on some luxurious train and wondered how she was feeling
today. Suddenly she herself felt lonely and ignored. No one really cared
where she was or what she was doing. It was glorious to be free but it
would be---- She did not finish the thought, for someone came into the
office and at the sound of his step she hurriedly turned to confront
business or furtiveness or whatever might be there. She saw a tall man
of about thirty-five with a lean face and slow, observing, cynical eyes.
“I am sorry you found the office deserted. I am Langley, the editor.
What can I do for you? If it’s books, I don’t buy books. If it’s
subscriptions, I can’t afford it.”
“It’s a job,” said Horatia.
“For me or you?” asked the man with a lazy smile. She liked his voice.
It was well-bred. He was well-bred too and there was something vaguely
familiar about his name.
“You’ve got one,” she countered.
He smiled neither in assent nor dissent.
“And you want one?”
“On a newspaper.”
“There are more substantial sheets than this one, you know.”
He spoke pleasantly and Horatia felt suddenly expansive and ready to
talk.
“I’ve been to them all. One won’t have me, another wants me possibly to
do society personals, and another wants me to run a spicy scandal column
for them.”
“So they would. But as fourth fiddle I’ve nothing much better to offer,
I’m afraid. I don’t need reporters, which I suppose is what you are
hankering for, nearly as much as other ingredients for this paper.”
“I’m sorry,” said Horatia. “I’d like to work next to this view.”
“That’s why I took the office. I thought that too. But I can’t put the
things that view tells me across with the public.”
“They would be pleasant things,” said Horatia. She was interested and
meant to find out as much as she could about this man and his queer
paper. And she felt in him a willingness to prolong the conversation. To
test it, she turned to go.
“Good morning,” she said brightly. “Again I’m sorry.”
“It’s too bad. Will you give up the journalistic life now that the Big
Four have offered you so infinitely less than nothing?”
“I suppose I’ll have to.”
“Have you done any of it yet? I beg your pardon for the question, which,
not being a prospective employer, I haven’t any right to ask. Don’t
answer if you don’t like.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve done no work--of any kind. Just raw--out of
college.”
“University?”
She nodded and at the word the train of association became complete.
Langley--of course--the 1905 Langley, who had been the big man in his
day and left a train of college glory behind him that even yet was not
obliterated by the hundreds of more recent graduates. He had begun the
student government--but possibly it was not the same one. She was sure
she hadn’t better ask him.
“Isn’t it odd,” he was saying, “how many college graduates think they
can reform the world just by getting on a newspaper? They think such
foolish things--that papers are forums of opinions--that they can write
things they want to write. My dear young lady, a newspaper is only a
medium for advertisers, that is, if it’s successful.”
“But I know that,” answered Horatia, “perfectly. I’m quite practical
about it. And I don’t want to reform the world. I want to live right in
it. I’m not the least bit of a reformer. I rather like the world.”
She looked so engagingly young and sweet and sensible that the man’s
face brightened--almost involuntarily, as if he did not want it to
brighten.
“You’re a romanticist, young lady.”
“I started out this morning from an ugly stone house on a lovely hill to
seek my fortune. There was only one trouble. No one put any obstacles in
my way and no one knew I was going to seek it really. The people I told
didn’t understand. You’re the first person who has begun to talk to me,
so I told you. And I’m getting too expansive. But I feel much better.”
“I wish I could give you a job, young adventurer,” answered the man, a
little irrelevantly. “You might bring back some of the enthusiasm I had
when I was as young as you are. But I was more solemn.”
“Oh, I can be solemn on occasion,” said Horatia. She was having a
tremendously good time, talking to this man who didn’t know her name and
to whom it was so easy to talk. And he too was warming to the
conversation.
“You see, I haven’t much of a newspaper. Three of us run it and we don’t
do our own printing. There is one man who had hopes as I did. There is
another who drinks too much--when he writes well--and writes badly when
he drinks too little. We started out to make a newspaper which would not
muck-rake, you know, but tell the truth about things. And we find, dear
young lady, that nobody wants us. Even you wouldn’t want a job from us.”
“I truly think I would,” said Horatia. “Don’t you want a woman’s
department? I really would enjoy doing society personals for a paper
with a purpose.”
He laughed uproariously and she noticed how young he could look.
“Will you come to lunch and talk it over? I’ll tell you all about
it--hopes and failures, young lady adventurer.”
“If I can pay for my own lunch.”
He bowed, then added with a twinkle:
“Of course we aren’t absolutely down to bedrock. I could pay for your
lunch.”
“But it’s easier for me to beg for a job if I’m paying for my own. My
name is Horatia Grant, Mr. Langley.”
“Miss Grant,” said Langley, holding the door open, “no matter who pays
for it, I am going to enjoy my lunch.”