A doctor is awarded his diploma; a lawyer is admitted to the bar; a
preacher is given a pulpit; an actor rises from understudy to the
leading role; a newspaper reporter is given a "by-line" and sees his
name over a story for the first time.
Under the big head-line. "Gibson Found; Quits Race," and over the
announcement Gibson had authorized--"that much and no more"--appeared
the magic words, "By John Gallant."
By that simple token he passed automatically from the position of "cub"
to be a full-fledged reporter.
The only ceremony marking the graduation was when Brennan, leaning over
his shoulder as he gazed at his "by-line," said in his ear:
"Looks pretty nice, doesn't it?"
The story stated plainly that Gibson authorized the publication of the
statement that he was leaving Los Angeles to search for "Gink" Cummings
and did not intend returning until he brought Cummings back with him to
face trial for the murder of Murphy, as co-defendant with "Slim" Gray
and his two "bashers." John explained to P. Q. that he had given his
word of honor that he would print nothing but the brief announcement.
With the city editor's consent he omitted mentioning where he had met
Gibson and under what circumstances Gibson had talked with him.
"A newspaper reporter's word must be as good as his bond," said P. Q.
"Remember, Gallant, never to print what you have received in confidence.
I fired more than one reporter because he broke his word, although in
breaking it he gave us a whale of an exclusive story."
Shortly after the first edition was on the streets, John looked up from
his typewriter to find Mrs. Sprockett standing beside his desk, about to
speak to him. Nervous, distressed, her eyes reddened from a sleepless
night of weeping, she asked him if he was too busy to spare her a
moment.
"Not at all," he said, rising and placing a chair for her beside his
desk.
Fumbling with her handkerchief and appearing apologetic for having
spoken to him so sharply the night before, she told him that Alma had
been away from home all night and had not returned yet.
"Then, Mrs. Sprockett, there's only one thing for you to do," he said,
"and that is to inform the police."
"I have just come from the police station," Mrs. Sprockett said. "They
sent me here. They told me that the best way to find a missing girl was
through the newspapers. They said that in 99 cases out of 100 girls who
disappear are either found or traced by the newspapers and newspaper
men.
"Of course, you know how much I regret having anything concerning Alma
appear in the newspapers. I thought there was some other way to find
her, some way that would attract less attention. But if it has to be, it
has to be, and I'll do anything to bring my little girl back to us."
"You will do the sensible thing if you permit the publication of Alma's
picture and a brief story that she is missing," John said.
Mrs. Sprockett drew from her bag a photograph of her daughter and gave
John a description of her and the facts relative to her disappearance.
"If anything has happened to her it will kill me," she said, as she rose
to go. "I'll owe a debt I can never repay to the one who brings her back
to me."
The photograph of Alma and the brief story that went with it appeared in
the second edition and John wondered if Mrs. Sprockett's husband had
dared to make the suggestion that had sent his wife to the police.
Soon after Mrs. Sprockett left the office, John, unable to wait a minute
longer without hearing her voice, telephoned to Consuello's home. He
wanted to tell her again that he loved her, and again and again, and he
wanted to hear her tell him, as she had before he left her, that her
"dreamings had come true, the brightest and the best." But it was Betty
instead of Consuello who answered his call.
"Conny is at the studio," Betty said. "She was called there unexpectedly
concerning something about her new picture."
"Did she tell you anything before she left?" he asked.
Betty laughed.
"She told me everything," she replied.
"And is she happy?" he asked.
"Happier than I have ever seen her," Betty assured him. "I'll tell her
that you called."
"That I called and that I----" he stopped himself.
"Love her," Betty finished for him.
"More and more every minute," he said, not to be abashed by Betty's good
natured presumptuousness.
But whenever throughout the day his thoughts of Consuello and their
great love brought him happiness, the haunting realization that his
mother still clung to her prejudice against her occupation wore upon
him. He had gone to his room after she had left him the night before and
at breakfast there had been a strained effort by both of them to avoid
recalling the cause for her distress. He had pleaded and begged her so
often to overcome her intolerant dislike for Consuello that he was
beginning to fear he would never be able to win her over. Not for much
longer, he realized, could he keep his mother's feelings against her
from Consuello.
Late in the afternoon, when the clatter of the telegraph instruments and
the typewriter had lulled, and tired men lounged, squatted on desks and
tilted back in chairs in the local room discussing the events of the
day, John and Brennan were summoned to the publisher's private office.
There they were confronted by P. Q. and the "chief," the managing editor
and the news editor, the quartet often referred to by the reporters as
the "brain trust." There John and Brennan received checks for $500 each
and were informed that their salaries had been doubled, the $500 being a
bonus for their work in exposing the Gibson-Cummings plot.
On his way home John decided to make one final effort to change his
mother's attitude toward Consuello. He planned it all very carefully.
First he would tell her of how his salary had been doubled and then he
would turn over to her the bonus check to be banked. Then he would take
her in his arms and beg her to listen while he told her of the love
between him and Consuello, whom he was to meet later in the evening.
He was absorbed in thinking of everything he would say to his mother
when he got off the street car at the corner and walked toward his home.
It was not until he was within a quarter of a block from his home when
he saw something that brought him to a sharp halt. Scarcely able to
believe what was before his eyes, he stood stock-still for a moment and
his worry left him like a weight had been lifted from his soul.
On the sidewalk was Mrs. Sprockett with the lost Alma clasped in her
arms. Mother and daughter were alternately laughing and crying and
kissing each other. Near them stood Mrs. Sprockett's husband, bouncing
the Sprockett baby in his arms and smiling and nodding his head to Alma
whenever her face showed to him from her mother's embrace.
And a few feet from the re-united mother and her daughter were Consuello
and his mother! Mrs. Gallant was smiling and patting Consuello's hand,
which she held in both her own!
Wondering what had happened to bring about such a happy scene, John
strode toward it, smiling his happiest. He was about to speak when Mrs.
Sprockett, allowing Alma to go to her father, grasped Consuello's hand
and holding it tight against her breast, cried softly:
"My dear, my dear, oh, what you have done for us! My dear, my dear."
He turned to his mother for an explanation.
"Consuello brought Alma back," Mrs. Gallant said. Then, lifting her face
to kiss him, she whispered, "Forgive me, my boy, for my unkindness to
her and to you."
She turned to Consuello.
"Come, my dear," she said, "you must have dinner with us."
Mrs. Sprockett hurried after her husband, who had started toward their
home with the baby on one arm and the other around Alma's shoulders.
John took Consuello's hand and whispered to her, "You wonderful,
wonderful girl."
Inside, while Mrs. Gallant rearranged the dinner table and prepared
portions for three instead of two, she related to him what had occurred.
"On the way to the studio this morning," she said, "I bought a copy of
your paper to read what you had written about--about what happened last
night. I saw in the paper the photograph of this girl who was missing
and, just by chance, I noticed the address of her home and realized it
must be close to your own. For that reason, I suppose, I gave the
picture more than a passing glance, although I thought little of it.
"I had no sooner arrived at the studio than this girl came running up to
me and begged me to help her become a motion picture actress. Because
the picture was still fresh in my mind I recognized her, although it was
some time before I got her to admit that she had run away from home. I
talked to her and told her what a mistake she had made and finally she
said that, if I wanted her to, she would return home. So I brought her
home and, truly, you would think I had done something wonderful by the
way your mother and Mrs. Sprockett thanked me."
"You did," he said, realizing that by her act of bringing home the
runaway Alma she had, unknowingly, won his mother to her.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because everything you do, everything about you is wonderful," he said,
justifying himself for the evasion by knowing that his answer was
truthful, at least.
* * * * *
In his imagination John enjoyed picturing the four principal streets of
Los Angeles--Broadway, Spring, Main and Hill--as different types of
girls much in the same way that he looked upon houses, particularly old
ones, as people.
Broadway he pictured as the ultra-modern girl, gay, sparkling, witty,
brilliant, temperamental; busily enjoying every minute of life; clad
always in the most down-to-the-moment styles. He imagined her as
popular, colorful, a wonderful companion for a happy, festive mood; a
street that looked upon her companion streets as a debutante looks upon
her older sisters.
Her faults he placed as tempestuous, born of an excess of nervous
energy; a desire to stay up too late and keep others up with her; an
insatiable love for beautiful, costly things; a super-abundance of
light-heartedness and a touch of light-headedness and a spirit of utter
irresponsibility.
A tempting street, a flirting street, almost a flapper street.
Hill street he thought of as older, quieter, more thoughtful and sedate;
a book-loving, home-loving sort of a girl; mildly reproving but secretly
admiring her sister street, Broadway. She took pride, he thought, in
Pershing Square, a restful spot in the roar of the downtown
thoroughfares that was like a cool hand on a fevered brow, a kind
thought for others, a touch of unselfishness.
A steady, calm, sweet girl; the kind of a girl whom everyone knows would
make a wonderful wife and mother, but whom few ever marry. One to turn
to in trouble, to rely upon and to always find ready to serve; less
popular than her companion streets, gentler, less strident.
A beautiful girl in church on Sunday mornings, but a wallflower at a
dance.
Main street was the girl of old Los Angeles, the daughter of the dons,
dark-eyed, mysterious, quaintly and languidly entrancing, he pictured
her always with a rose in her midnight-black hair, perhaps a black lace
fan dangling at her wrist; wearing the dress of other days with shining
black beads and flounces and trinkets--scorned by Miss Broadway as so
much tinsel--conceding only her rouge and powder to modernism.
Haughtily proud of her origin, pointing to her birthplace--the Plaza--in
its shabby, tumbled-down setting as the birthplace of the city. A girl
speaking Spanish, softly and beautifully, and knowing instinctively the
steps of the bewitching La Jota.
A hint of Carmen; a romantic girl. A girl for a stroll in the moonlight
and a kiss upon taunting lips.
And Spring street!
She had a touch of each of her companions, Broadway's brilliant beauty;
Hill street's charming character and Main street's pride of ancestry.
And yet so different from them all!
An independent girl, versatile and elusive; tasting of life deeper than
her companions; with rich men of the world lovers. Sophisticated,
whole-hearted, generous; regretting with those who loved her the passing
of the days when she held her arms open to bon vivants and epicures.
A chic girl whom you thought of as having a past. An adventurous girl,
counting among those who were her followers a host of varied characters
from Le Compte Davis, the bibliophile lawyer, chuckling over
Schopenhauer's pessimism between hours of study over his law books, to
Barney Oldfield, the racing driver, who deserted her to become a
manufacturer; Jim Jeffries, former world's heavyweight pugilist, who was
her companion in his fame and who left her to become a rancher; and Al
Levy, who wined her and dined her in his cafe.
All this musing John related to Consuello in the wonderfully happy
evenings that followed Mrs. Gallant's conversion from disliking to
loving the girl he adored.
He told her he could never decide which of the four he liked best. He
said sometimes Broadway had shaken her bobbed curls at him, smiling and
bright, pretty and stylish, and he was captivated. Then, perhaps, a
little remorseful that he had pursued so fleeting a beauty as Broadway,
he had turned to Hill street to be comforted by her soundness and to
tell her, in his heart, that she was a "real" girl, so much more
worth-while than her light-hearted sister, who wanted to be going and
going all the time.
And nights, when he felt a longing for the stories of the old days, or,
perhaps, to see the intriguing shadows of her dark eyes, he visited Main
street, wandering away at times into Chinatown, clinging like a faithful
servant to the feet of the daughter of the dons.
When he had tired of all three, Broadway, Hill and Main, he told her, he
had turned to Spring street and found her ever alluring and interesting.
It was there, in George Blake's gymnasium, that he had trained for the
bout at Vernon and it was there that "Gink" Cummings had held sway,
manipulating Gibson like a puppet, ruling with an iron hand, ordering
his gangsters to "bash" whoever opposed him and collecting his
ill-gotten tributes.
"Do you remember," she asked, "that day we met and how when you said you
were frightened and embarrassed I told you that I had read stories of
reporters who never knew fear and that in plays and books the reporter
always did the bravest things?"
He smiled back to her.
"And I told you that it was like a story or a play when you rescued me
from the servant who had asked me to leave?" he added. "I told you then
that you were a beautiful heroine and pointed out Gibson to you as the
villain."
"And you said that in books and plays dreams came true and when I asked
you what dream you wished to come true you said, 'A rather silly,
hopeless, golden sort of dream--a dream of meeting you again,'" she
supplemented.
"A dream that came true far more wonderfully than I ever hoped it
would," he said.
They were beside her open casement window. It was a warm, bright Sunday
morning and in a few minutes they would leave to meet his mother for the
long-deferred visit to the home of Consuello's parents.
"There have been stories of all kinds, told and untold, about Spring
street," he said, "but do you know the one I like best?"
She shook her head.
"The story you told to me of how it received its name," he said. "And do
you know why?"
Again she shook her head.
"Because you are to me 'Mi Primavera'--My Springtime."
They entered the waiting automobile to be whirled through the city and
out to the romantic hacienda where the languorous past so strangely and
sweetly blended with the vital present and the throbbing promise of a
future filled with love and life together.
The motor swung around a corner and into a throbbing thoroughfare down
the long, crowded course of which was pictured in an almost perpetual
perspective panorama the rushing torrent, the back-wash, the undertow,
the placid pools and the spectators upon the banks of the gigantic river
of human endeavor.
Through the cinema of John Gallant's mind there swept a thought that
here was presented a prophecy and a promise. Hand in hand they would
meet whatever the coming days might bring--toil, failure, happiness,
success. Love was the magic wand that made them all as one.
Steadily he clasped her warm, trusting fingers as they nestled in his
palm.
"We are starting down our Spring street, Mi Primavera," he said.
And as she looked up into his ardent eyes he knew that all his fondest
dreams were coming true.
THE END.