THE FREE AND ENTIRELY UNCURBED
Gail Sargent became suddenly and acutely aware of an entirely new and
ethnological subdivision of the human race. She had known of Caucasians,
Mongolians, Ethiopians, and the others, but now she was to meet the
representatives of the gay, carefree, and entirely uncurbed metropolitan
press! They figuratively swarmed from the ground, dropped from the
eaves, and wriggled from under the rugs!
Immediately after Gail had reached home from the accident in the subway,
and had been put to bed and given tea, and had repeatedly assured the
doctor there was nothing the matter with her, they brought, at her
urgent request, copies of the “extras,” which were already being yelled
from every street corner and down every quiet residence block.
The accounts were, in the main, more or less accurate, barring the fact
that they started with the assumption that there had been one hundred in
Allison’s party, all killed. Later issues, however, regretfully reduced
the number of dead to forty, six, and finally none, at which point they
became more or less coherent, and gave an exact list of the people who
were there, the cause of the accident, and a most appreciatively
accentuated history of the heroic work of the men. Although she
regretted that her picture had by this time crept into the public
prints, grouped with the murders and defalcations of the day, she was
able to overlook this personal discomfort as one of the minor penalties
which civilisation has paid for its progress; like electric light bugs
and electric fan neuralgia, and the smell of gasolene.
Long before this period, however, the reporters had tracked her to her
lair; so long before, in fact, that there had been three of them waiting
on the doorstep when she was brought into the house, eager young men,
with a high spirit of reverence and delicacy, which was concentrated
entirely on their jobs. They would have held her on the doorstep until
she fainted or dropped dead, if, by so doing, they could have secured
one statement, or hint of a statement, upon which they could have
fastened something derogatory to her reputation, or the reputation of
any of her family or friends; for that was great stuff, and what the
public wanted; and they would have photographed her gleefully in the
process of expiring. Aunt Helen Davies, being a woman of experience,
snatched Gail into the house before they had taken more than eight or
nine photographs of her, but, from that instant, the doorbell became a
nuisance and the telephone bell a torture! Both were finally
disconnected, but, at as late an hour as one A.M., the house was
occasionally assaulted.
By that time Gail had telegrams of frantic inquiry from all her friends
back home, including the impulsive Clemmens, and particularly including
a telegram from her mother, stating that that highly agitated lady could
not secure a reservation on the first train on account of its being
Saturday night, but that she would start on the fast eleven-thirty the
next morning, whereat Gail kissed the telegram, and cried a little, and
gave way to the moist joy of homesickness.
In the meantime, the representatives of the gay and carefree and
absolutely uncurbed metropolitan press, were by no means discouraged by
the fact that they had not been able to secure much, except hectic
imaginings from the exterior of the Sargent house. They were busy in
every other possible direction, with the same commendable persistence
which we observe in an ant trying to drag a grasshopper up and down a
cornstalk on the way home. They secured a straight story from Allison, a
modest one from the rector, and variously viewed experiences from other
male members of the party, and collected huge piles of photographs,
among them the charming pictures of Gail, which had previously been
printed on the innocent pages of arrivals at Palm Beach and the Riviera
and other fashionable winter resorts, the whole spread being headed
“What Society Is Doing.”
So far the explosion editors of the various papers had seen nothing to
particularly commend in the work of their fevered emissaries, and even
the heavy-jawed genius who gathered, from silent cogitation over four
cigarettes and a quart of beer, the purple fiction that the explosion
had cracked the walls of every subway in the city, which were likely to
cave in at any time, only received the compliment of a grateful grunt.
Little Miss Piper, of the _Morning Planet_, however, was possessed of a
better thought. She was a somewhat withered and puckered little woman,
who had sense enough to dress so as to excite nothing but pity, and she
quietly slipped on her ugly little bonnet with the funny ribbon bow in
the back, and hurried out to the magnificent residence of Mrs. Phyllis
Worthmore, who loathed publicity and had photographs taken once a month
for the purpose.
Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore was invariably sweet and gracious to working
women, for, after all, they were her sisters, you know; and she excused
herself from a caller in order to meet little Miss Piper in Mr.
Worthmore’s deserted den. Mrs. Worthmore was highly agitated over the
news of the explosion, and she required no particular urging to jabber
on and on about her dear friends who had been in that terrible
catastrophe, and she was ultra enthusiastic when the name of Gail was
mentioned.
“Oh, Miss Sargent is quite the sensation of the season!” she gushed.
“Her people are fairly well to do, I believe; but her beauty makes up
for the absence of any extravagant fortune. It is commonly conceded that
none of the eligibles in our set are available until Miss Sargent has
made her choice. Positively all of them are at her feet!” and, at
puckered little Miss Piper’s later request, she lightly enumerated a few
of the eligibles in their set; after which Miss Piper took to furtive
glances at her watch, and to feeling the excessively modulated voice of
Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore pounding into her brain like the clatter of a
watchman’s rattle.
The result of that light-hearted and light-headed interview, in which
Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore, by special request, was not quoted, suddenly
sprang on the startled eyes of Gail, when she leaped through the _Sunday
Morning Planet_ at eight o’clock next morning. An entire page,
embellished in the centre with a beautifully printed photograph, was
devoted to the sensational beauty from the middle-west! Around her were
grouped nine smaller photographs; Allison, Dick Rodley, Willis
Cunningham, Houston Van Ploon, the Reverend Smith Boyd, a callow youth
who had danced with her three times, a Count who had said “How do you
do?” and sailed for Europe, and two men whom she had never met. All
these crack eligibles were classified under the general head of “Slaves
to Her Witching Smile,” and a big, boxed-in list was given, in extremely
black-faced type, stating, in dollars and cents, the exact value in the
matrimonial market of each slave; and the lively genius who had put
together this symposium, by a toweringly happy thought conceived in the
very height of the rush hours, totalled the whole, and gave it as the
commercial worth of Gail’s beauty and charm. It ran into thirteen
figures, including the dollar mark and the two ciphers for cents.
Nor was this all! A lightning fingered artist had depicted, at the
bottom of the group, outline sketches of the nine suitors, on their
knees in a row, holding up, towards the beautiful picture of Gail in the
centre, their hearts in one hand and their bags of money in the other;
and, even though overworked, the artist had not forgotten to put the
Cross of the Legion of Honour on the breast of the Count, nor the sparse
Van Dyke on Willis Cunningham. Flowing with further facile fancy, he had
embellished the upper right-hand corner of the group with an extremely
lithe and slim-waisted drawing of the streaming haired Gail, as a siren
fishing in the sea; and the sea, represented by many frothing curls,
was, in the upper left-hand corner, densely populated by foolish little
gold fish, rushing eagerly to the dangling bait of the siren. Any one of
the parties mentioned could have sued the _Planet_ for libel; but they
would not, and they would have been made highly ridiculous if they had,
which was the joke of the whole matter, and left the metropolitan press
more and more highly uncurbed; which was a right sturdily to be
maintained in a land of free speech!
When Lucile Teasdale and Arly Fosland arrived at Jim Sargent’s house at
ten o’clock, and had been let in at the side entrance, they found Gail
dabbing her eyes with a powder puff, taken from a little black
travelling bag which stood open at her side. Arlene was a second later
than Lucile in clasping Gail in her arms, because she had to lift a
travelling veil. The two girls expressed their condolence and their
horror of the outrage, and volubly poured out more sympathy; then they
sat down and shrieked with laughter.
“It’s too awful for words!” gasped Lucile. “But it is funny, too.”
Gail’s chin quivered.
“There should be a law against such things,” she broken-heartedly
returned, in a voice which wavered and halted with the echoes of recent
sobs.
“I’ll put the _Planet_ out of business!” stormed Jim Sargent, stalking
up and down the library, with his fists clenched and his face purple.
“I’ll bankrupt them!” and he paused, as he passed, to reassuringly pat
the shoulder of poor Aunt Grace, who sat perfectly numb holding one
thumb until the bone ached. Her eyes were frankly red, and the creases
of worry had set into her brow so deeply that they must have scarred her
skull. “I’ll hunt up the whelp who wrote that stuff, and the cur who
drew it, and the dog who inserted it!” frothed the raging Jim. “I’ll—”
“The press is the palladium of our national liberty, Uncle Jim,” drawled
the soothing voice of Ted.
“You can’t do a thing about it,” counselled Gerald Fosland, a stiff
looking gentleman who never made a mistake of speech, or manner, or
attire.
“Shucks, Gail!” suddenly remembered Lucile. “The big Faulker reception
is this week, and your gown was to be so stunning. Don’t go home!”
Mrs. Helen Davies cast on her feather-brained daughter a glance of
severe reproof.
“Have you no sense of propriety, Lucile?” she warned. “Gail, very
naturally, can not remain here under the circumstances. It does great
credit to her that, immediately upon realising this horrible occurrence,
she telegraphed to her mother, without consulting any of us, that she
was returning.”
“I just wanted to go home,” said Gail, her chin quivering and her pretty
throat tremulous with breath pent from sobbing.
“It’ll all blow over, Gail,” argued Uncle Jim, in deep distress because
she was going so soon. If she had only stopped long enough to pack up,
they might have persuaded her to stay. “Just forget it, and have a good
time.”
“Jim,” ordered the stern voice of Aunt Helen, “will you be kind enough
to see if any one is out in front?”
“Certainly,” agreed Jim, wondering why his wife’s sister was suddenly so
severe with him.
“It’s time to start,” called Ted, with practised wisdom allowing ten
minutes for good-byes, parting instructions, and forgotten messages.
The adieus were said. Aunt Grace, clasping Gail in her arms, began to
sob, out of a full heart and a general need for the exercise. Gerald
Fosland took the hand of his wife and kissed it, in most gallant
fashion.
“I shall miss you dreadfully, my dear,” he stated.
“I shall be thinking of you,” responded Arlene, adjusting her veil.
Mrs. Davies drew Arlene into the drawing room.
“It was so sweet of you to agree to accompany Gail,” she observed. “It
would be useless to attempt to influence her now, but I look to you to
bring her back in a week. Her prospects are really too brilliant to be
interrupted by an unfortunate episode of this nature.”