Produced by Aaron Cannon
THE RED CROSS GIRL
The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
By Richard Harding Davis
With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
CONTENTS:
Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
4. BLOOD WILL TELL
5. THE SAILORMAN
6. THE MIND READER
7. THE NAKED MAN
8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
9. THE CARD-SHARP
INTRODUCTION
R. H. D.
“And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
unafraid.”
He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and
so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
brother was Peter Pan.
Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of
sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites
against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and
medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go
elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants.
Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I
think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman.
Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you
remember the Happy Hunting Ground in “The Bar Sinister”?--“Where nobody
hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt.”
Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of
them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary
member of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was
another.
To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better
than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted
every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he
played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed,
or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for
hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But
about the other fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes
of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the
slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they
were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and
color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the greatest
recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps,
that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to
his special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's
Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through
Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a
friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the
same again.
But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect.
And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but
from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of
knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and
discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the
scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a
book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.
But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants
in the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and
the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
disappointments of this uncompromising world.
He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid
of them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much
he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
bliss, akin to anguish.
One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
suffered....
Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed
to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and
though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H.
D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm
the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R.
H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the
iris. And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
vines.
It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was
with us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
dependent upon each other in many ways.
Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had
no name. Now it is called “Let's Pretend.”
Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but
we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
pretendings, until real troubles went down before them--down and out.
It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were
in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or
two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against
gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It
never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of
the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four
for tennis and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we
sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and
talked until the next morning.
He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the
Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
loud and joyous singing of ballads.
At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
marble, gone down the ages as “statue of a young athlete.” He stood
six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine
head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a
child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He
was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that
he could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door
you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at
work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written
and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in
that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure
to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send
you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn
a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half
column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to
praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room
at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and
whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and
carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams.
Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is,
or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest.
Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of
statesmen, laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
were as important as sausages and thick cream.
Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's
work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper,
he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a
wistful glance, and hurry to his workroom.
He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and
he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously
human, flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
corresponding, “The German March Through Brussels,” was probably written
almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the
fastest talker I ever heard), but when it came to fiction he had no
facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any
facility that he may have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy
and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of,
the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs,
pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked
upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile
turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair
of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a
turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one
those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each
omission he would ask himself: “Does the picture remain?” If it did not,
he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and experimented with
the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean
labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed,
ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which his tales and
romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he
has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
stand in their present order until--after lunch.
A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after
many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
smoke there was in it.
He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
furnish examples.
Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
it.
Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And
it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
hours and a half.
I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
is owing in some measure to him.
R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
country to see the matter in the same way.
I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
“personal interviews” which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--“You can't expect a
fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain.”
There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
sure that I am right.
An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where “Nobody hunts us and
there is nothing to hunt.”
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
already he was a “star” man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
“What's the matter with the story?” asked the city editor. “With the
speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns.”
“Suppose it does!” exclaimed Ward; “anybody can collect type-written
speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
story in that?”
“When I was a reporter,” declared the city editor, “I used to be glad to
get a day in the country.”
“Because you'd never lived in the country,” returned Sam. “If you'd
wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself.”
“Of what?” demanded the city editor. “There's nothing to New York except
cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
on the women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts
in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we
never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women
who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!”
“How curious!” said Sam. “Now I see why they took you off the street and
made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble.”
The city editor sighed. “How young you are!” he exclaimed. “However,
to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be
few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in
convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent.”
Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
him give away a million dollars.
“Aren't you going to get his speech?”, asked Redding, the staff
photographer.
“Get HIS speech!” said Sam. “They have Pinkertons all over the grounds
to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to
hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the
first train back to the centre of civilization.”
“There's going to be a fine lunch,” said Redding, “and reporters are
expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were.”
Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his
armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his
clothes and always treated them with courtesy.
“You can have my share,” he said. “I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have
a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
Rochelle.”
He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron
gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble
barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform
of a nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar
turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet.
A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such
health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that
other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
“That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that.” And so
warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
screaming headlines.
Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him
was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would
have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister Anne. He stood
in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt--as though
his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
“I am from the REPUBLIC,” he said. “Everybody is so busy here to-day
that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,”
he added disappointedly, “because it's so well done that people ought
to know about it.” He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was
apparent that the ignorance of the public concerning their excellence
greatly annoyed him.
When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
“You are a reporter?” she said.
Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others--only
reporters know how few--would as soon place themselves in the hands of a
dentist.
“A reporter from the REPUBLIC,” repeated Sam.
“But why ask ME?” demanded Sister Anne.
Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
he glanced at her uniform.
“I thought you were at work here,” he said simply. “I beg your pardon.”
He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
impression he was distinctly dishonest.
“There was no other reason,” persisted Sister Anne. “I mean for speaking
to me?”
The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
“I am sorry,” said Sam. “I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and,
as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics
about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color.”
Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly
he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this
young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter--even of such a
nice-looking reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. “If
that's what you really want to know,” said Sister Anne doubtfully, “I'll
try and help you; but,” she added, looking at him as one who issues an
ultimatum, “you must not say anything about me!”
Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class
will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so
that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young
woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her?
Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: “The
Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful
of all living women.” No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as
there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to
say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled,
not because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of
the hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about
one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated
by Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only
to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
unselfishness of her nature.
“Do you really scrub the floors?” he demanded--“I mean you
yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing
brush?”
Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
“We do that when we first come here,” she said--“when we are
probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?”
“And these awful patients,” demanded Sam--“do you wait on them? Do you
have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?” He
glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
annihilate them. “It's not fair!” exclaimed Sam. “It's ridiculous. I'd
like to choke them!”
“That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents,” said Sister
Anne.
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” said Sam. “Here are you--if
you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
and cripples.”
“Nor is that quite the way we look at,” said Sister Anne.
“We?” demanded Sam.
Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
“I'm not the only nurse here,” she said “There are over forty.”
“You are the only one here,” said Sam, “who is not! That's Just what
I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody
else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are
different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds.”
Sister Anne laughed with delight.
“I beg your pardon,” said Sam stiffly.
“No--pardon me,” said Sister Anne; “but your ideas of the duties of a
nurse are so quaint.”
“No matter what the duties are,” declared Sam; “You should not be here!”
Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as
delicate as the pinions of a bird.
“One must live,” said Sister Anne.
They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows
of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them
stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated
herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the
flashing waters of the Sound.
“Yes; that's it,” she repeated softly--“one must live.”
Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
heightened by the fact that “the woman was very fair.” He conceded
that. He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced
by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the
gentlest and most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed
that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish
sick people.
“If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
there are other ways of earning a living.”
The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and again she
smiled.
“Now what would you suggest?” she asked. “You see,” she said, “I have no
one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so
I doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own
work must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living.
Maybe you could advise me?”
Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his
salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember
which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were
those whose salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy
editors, he knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take
her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was extremely well
dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear
would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look
at it that way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
position that his silence had become significant; and to cover his real
thoughts he said hurriedly:
“Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
difficult.”
“And manicuring?” suggested Sister Anne.
Sam exclaimed in horror.
“You!” he cried roughly. “For you! Quite impossible!”
“Why for me?” said the girl.
In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
“You?” protested Sam. “You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!” His vehemence
was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
gravel walk, his profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study
his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city
editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes
full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. “How much do they give you
a month?” “Forty dollars,” answered Sister Anne. “This is what hurts me
about it,” said Sam.
“It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to
work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,
probably you know that better than I do.”
“No; I don't know that,” said Sister Anne.
Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
complete stranger--even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but,
though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
“I think you are working too hard,” he said, smiling happily. “I think
you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever
give you a day off?”
“Next Saturday,” said Sister Anne. “Why?”
“Because,” explained Sam, “if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
going to prescribe a day off for you--a day entirely away from iodoform
and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a
lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or cry,
if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in
a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you
safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer,” he added hurriedly,
“I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of the
other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly,
I hope you won't!”
The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not
say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost
laughing with happiness.
“I think that would be quite delightful,” said Sister Anne,”--quite
delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't
bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great
deal of money. I think we might cut out the taxicab--and walk in the
park and feed the squirrels.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--“then you know Central Park?”
Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
“I once lived near there,” she said.
“In Harlem?”
“Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young,” said Sister
Anne. “Since then I have always lived in the country or in--other
places.”
Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
“It's so kind of you to consent,” he cried. “Indeed, you are the kindest
person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
sick people, and, now I know.”
“It is you who are kind,” protested Sister Anne, “to take pity on me.”
“Pity on you!” laughed Sam. “You can't pity a person who can do more
with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now,” he
demanded in happy anticipation, “where are we to meet?”
“That's it,” said Sister Anne. “Where are we to meet?”
“Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,”
said Sam; “and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh,” exclaimed Sam joyfully, “it
will be a wonderful day--a wonderful day!”
Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
wistfully. She held out her hand.
“I must go back to my duties,” she said. “Good-by.”
“Not good-by,” said Sam heartily, “only until Saturday--and my name's
Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
name?”
“Sister Anne,” said the girl. “In the nursing order to which I belong we
have no last names.”
“So,” asked Sam, “I'll call you Sister Anne?”
“No; just Sister,” said the girl.
“Sister!” repeated Sam, “Sister!” He breathed the word rather than spoke
it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made
it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said
“Sweetheart!” or “Beloved!” “I'll not forget,” said Sam.
Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
“Nor I,” she said.
Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over
again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed
their next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would
meet her with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her
when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way
would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to
be the most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be
the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance--and it should
cost half his week's salary.
The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he
had observed that women had strange ideas about clothes--some of them
thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some
of them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction
upon the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He
was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she
must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning
each week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the
birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--the day he had first met her
must always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one
like her and he was sure there never would be one like her. She was
so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
manner there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her
simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a
princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged
her to let him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
“You are so kind to take pity on me,” she had said. He thought of many
clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had
not thought of them at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in
front of him.
He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous
that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry
living--forty dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her
sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he had decided
that, when they were married, they would live in a flat--probably in
one overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several
attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a week--or, if she
preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return
to the country. In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he
conceded even that sacrifice.
When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
to a waiting motor car and said, “Home!” to the chauffeur. He drove
her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
the Sound.
There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
her noisily.
“I have had a most splendid adventure!” said Sister Anne. “There were
six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
for me; and....”
One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
“Don't you believe it!” he interrupted. “That man who was talking to you
was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.”
Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
“He did not know me!” she protested. “It quite upset him that I should
be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.”
There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
“I told him,” continued Sister Anne, “that I got forty dollars a month,
and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
be a manicurist.”
“Oh, Anita!” protested the admiring chorus.
“And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'”
“Oh, Anita!” shrieked the chorus.
Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
Anita Flagg, was amused.
“What an awfully jolly rag!” he cried. “And what are you going to do
about it?”
“Nothing,” said Anita Flagg. “The reporters have been making me
ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
And,” she added, “that's all there is to that!”
That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: “I want to hear
you call me Sister.”
“Call you what?” exclaimed the young man. “I will tell you,” he
whispered, “what I'd like to call you!”
“You will not!” interrupted Anita. “Do as I tell you and say Sister
once. Say it as though you meant it.”
“But I don't mean it,” protested his lordship. “I've said already what
I....”
“Never mind what you've said already,” commanded Miss Flagg. “I've heard
that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once.”
His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
“Sister!” he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
though she were cold.
“Not a bit like it, Deptford,” she said. “Good-night.”
Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
window looking out toward the great city to the south.
When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
young woman to shriek with amazement.
“Anita!” she exclaimed. “You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
cry?”
It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
turned upon the tactless intruder.
“Suppose,” cried Anita fiercely, “a man thought you were worth forty
dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more
than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care
of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
do?”
“Why, Anita!” exclaimed Miss Page.
“What would you do?” demanded Anita Flagg. “This is what you'd do: You'd
go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love
me--and love me!”
“And why don't you?” cried Helen Page.
“Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!” cried Anita Flagg. “Because
I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?”
At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward,
in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing
Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar
was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine
ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in
mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue
pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk
and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins
rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these
explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no
more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
office. “In the name of Mike!” he shouted. “What IS this?”
The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
came back to earth.
“What's what?” Sam demanded.
At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the
room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward
Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was
late--and it was important.
“What's wrong?” he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
“Read the opening paragraph,” protested Collins. “It's like that for a
column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about
Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at
all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
what it is. And, what's worse,” wailed the copy editor defiantly and
to the amazement of all, “it's so darned good that you can't touch it.
You've got to let it go or kill it.”
The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade,
were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at
Collins.
“Is it all like that?”
“There's a column like that!”
“Run it just as it is,” commanded the managing editor. “Use it for your
introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
with pictures.” He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
“What's the idea, Ward?” he said. “This is a newspaper--not a magazine!”
The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also
smiled, but unhappily.
“I know it's not news, Sir,” he said; “but that's the way I saw the
story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the
governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside,
this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It
seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss a million didn't
stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
wanted to say,” continued Sam stoutly “was that the moving spirit of the
hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women
who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you
called 'The Red Cross Girl.'”
Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
“But it's not news!”
“It's not news,” said Elliott doubtfully; “but it's the kind of story
that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives
men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the
illegitimate sister.'”
It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to
a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was
this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return
for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it
served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and
incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how
clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant
Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and
for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed through the
wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the
little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the
front page was his story, “The Red Cross Girl.” It had the place of
honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his
own story was one of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken
of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of
mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of
the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman;
but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a
strange and grotesque legend.
“Daughter of Millionaire Flagg,” it read, “in a New Role, Miss Anita
Flagg as The Red Cross Girl.”
For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper
so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From
below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis
hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A
girl he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever--worse than
that had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that
made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made
had Sister Anne really lived and really died.
At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone
at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the
table and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking
at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading “The Red
Cross Girl”; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent
slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks
the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read
as far as a paragraph beginning, “When Sister Anne walked between them
those who suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces
to the rain,” she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
“Any man,” cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
servants, “who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might
be like that--if any man would help.”
She gave her attention to the telephone and “Information.” She demanded
to be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr.
Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
“I'm tired of being called a good sport,” she protested, “by men who
aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
money--as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on
his shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint;
and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!”
“Be still!” implored Helen Page. “Any one might think you meant it!” She
nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
“Ye gods, Parker!” cried Anita Flagg. “Does it take three of you to pour
a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three
caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the
telephone and that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!”
The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. “And
what's more,” Anita hurled after them, “get your bets down quick, for
after I meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!”
Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the
only person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she
refused to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, “I'll call him up
later,” and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
opposite the cathedral.
“You're the very man I want,” said Hollworthy joyously--“you've got to
decide a bet.”
He turned and fell into step with Sam.
“It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you
knew. I bet her a theatre party.”
To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had
even been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he
had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know
what Sister Anne had meant to him?
“I'm afraid you lose,” he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
“You don't say so!” exclaimed that young man. “Fancy one of you chaps
being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in--getting up
a story for the Sunday supplement.”
Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet
to escape. “And, instead of your fooling her,” exclaimed Holworthy
incredulously, “she was having fun, with you!”
With difficulty Sam smiled.
“So it would seem,” he said.
“She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!” exclaimed Holworthy
admiringly. “I thought she was making it up--she must have made some of
it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
so is it?”
“Yes, that's so.”
“By Jove!” cried Holworthy--“and that you invited her to see the
moving-picture shows?”
Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket,
smiled pleasantly.
“Did she say I said that--or you?” he asked
“She did.”
“Well, then, I must have said it.”
Holworthy roared with amusement.
“And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?”
Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
“Yes; I said that too.”
“And I thought she was making it up!” exclaimed Holworthy. “We did
laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself.”
Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
“You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita
Flagg--just as if she were nobody!”
“I don't think,” said Sam, “that was my idea.” He waved his stick at a
passing taxi. “I'm late,” he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
had made.
An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
“You're wanted on the 'phone,” he commanded. His voice dropped to an
awed whisper. “Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!”
The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
never met.
“Say you can't find me,” he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
precipitately.
“The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must have it.”
“Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules--and hang
up.”
Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg--the rich,
the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
morning--had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
thrown down--and thrown hard!
That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
whom he was acquainted only by sight.
Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
“Ward,” he began abruptly, “I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
It's on account of that story of this morning.”
Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served
so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that,
considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was
causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of
position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing
editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious
as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say
without resentment:
“Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
“I did,” returned Elliott; “I liked it so much that I'm sending you to
a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as
our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work;
and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday.”
After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air.
He could not believe it was real--that it was actually to him it had
happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events,
to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of
reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh
Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback
only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he might divide it.
He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with
some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really
care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would
have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
accept them--begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and
terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
his admiration--and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
ingenuously he had shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl
he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous
when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a
hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could
not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself
had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be.
His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that.
Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and
flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who
wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got
the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and
said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so--when on arriving at the
office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
reading, “Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg “--he
was able to reply: “Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
person, who unfortunately has since died!”'
When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes
tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned
miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
“But why does he do it to me?” Her tone was that of the bewildered child
who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
changed into a very angry young woman.
“And what's more,” she announced, “he can't do it to me!”
She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
it was signed, “Sister Anne.”
In an hour the answer came: “Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
She is dead.”
Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was
not in his nature to be rude--certainly not to a woman, especially not
to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name
was Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he
assured himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could
see in a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing
their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that
she looked upon him as one entirely out of her world--as one with whom
she could do an unconventional thing and make a good story about it
later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance.
And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He
no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.
He was now a man with a responsible position--one who soon would be
conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage
by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased
tickets. And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have
occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been
sacrilege. At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through
dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to which he had
intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And
at the theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of all
musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience, appeared
wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That
Sister Anne was not there--that the pretty romance he had woven about
her had ended in disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he
was leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would
remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked straight into her
eyes!
He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him.
There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was
all in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing
suit; round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee,
was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with
excitement.
When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized
her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her
the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over
his left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but
some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the
stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but
it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly
sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to
be laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile
exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble
like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard
smile--and heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
“That's all she cares.” he told himself.
It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did,
she kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister
Anne.
For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained
upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly
and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the'
darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage
by a barrier of women's hats.
“Your friend Mr. Ward,” she began abruptly, in a whisper, “is the
rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the
other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved
abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor?
Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt
me?”
“Hurt you?” exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. “Don't be
ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is?
Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too
good-looking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him.
So when one of them laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the
trouble. I could see that when I was telling him.”
“Telling him!” repeated Miss Flagg--“Telling him what?”
“About what a funny story you made of it,” explained Holworthy. “About
his having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with
him.”
Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
“Oh!” she said softly. “So-so you told him that, did you? And--what else
did you tell him?”
“Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin too soon';
that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands of men
who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on.”
There was a pause.
“Did I tell you he said that?” breathed Anita Flagg.
“You know you did,” said Holworthy.
There was another pause.
“I must have been mad!” said the girl.
There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
“I'm afraid you are angry,” he ventured.
“Angry!” exclaimed Miss Flagg. “I should say I was angry, but not with
you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
let you take me out into the lobby.”
With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage
and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had
destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble woman--and he was sorry for
Miss Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be
that man did not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his
friends on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he
would take himself out of the front row, to give him back his money at
the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did
not want to admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that
the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in the
slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling
that he was in a false position; that if he were it was his own fault;
that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful
feeling.
When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the
second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance
running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude
to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at
him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense;
again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that
he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past
him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to
speak--and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to
give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
gently:
“This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
enough of it?”
Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
remorsefully.
“It's not Anita Flagg at all,” he said. “It's Sister Anne come back to
life again!” The girl shook her head.
“No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
wanted you to say it.”
She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
sweeping above the clouds.
“Say it again,” prompted Anita Flagg “Sister.”
“I will not!” returned the young man firmly. “But I'll say this,” he
whispered: “I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
the finest woman who has ever lived!”
Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
at the bass drum in the orchestra.
“I don't know,” she said, “but that sounds just as good.”
When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper;
but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
“We can see this act,” she said, “or--my car's in front of the
theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which
would you prefer?”
“Don't make me laugh!” said Sam.
As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but
paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
“There's only one thing,” she said to Sam, “that is making me unhappy;
and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am
leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next
Wednesday.”
“My business is to gather news,” said Sam, “but in all my life I never
gathered such good news as that.”
“Good news!” exclaimed Anita.
“Because,” explained Sam, “I am leaving, America--am spending the winter
in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that
is not what makes me unhappy.”
“Tell me,” begged Anita.
“Some day,” said Sam.
The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they
leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
“This is my unhappiness,” said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the
passenger list. It was: “The Earl of Deptford, and valet.” “And because
he is on board!”
Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
“He is not on board,” she said. “He changed to another boat.”
Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
“Why did he change?” he begged.
Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
despair.
“Is that all that is worrying you?” she said.