were Mr. Ludlow's property--or at least so Freckles inferred from
conversation overheard at his post. There had been a great deal of talk
that session about Mr. Ludlow's methods.
Freckles himself was no snob. Although he had heard Mr. Ludlow called
disgraceful, and although he firmly believed he was disgraceful, he did
not consider that any reason for not speaking to him. And so when Mr.
Ludlow got in all alone one morning, and the occasion seemed to demand
recognition of some sort, Freckles had chirped: “Good-morning!”
But the man, possibly deep in something else, simply knit together
his brows and gave no sign of having heard. After that, Henry Ludlow,
lobbyist, and Freckles McGrath, elevator boy, were enemies.
A little before noon, one day near the end of the session, a member of
the Senate and a member of the House rode down together in the elevator.
“There's no use waiting any longer,” the Senator was saying as they got
in. “We're as strong now as we're going to be. It's a matter of Stacy's
vote, and that's a matter of who sees him last.”
Freckles widened out his ears and gauged the elevator for very slow
running. Stacy had been written up in the papers as a wabbler on the
Kelley Bill.
“He's all right now,” pursued the Senator, “but there's every chance
that Ludlow will see him before he casts his vote this afternoon, and
then--oh, I don't know!” and with a weary little flourish of his hands
the Senator stepped off.
Freckles McGrath sat wrapped in deep thought. The Kelley Bill was coming
up in the Senate that afternoon. If Senator Stacy voted for it, it would
pass. If he voted against it, it would fail. He would vote for it if he
didn't see Mr. Ludlow; he wouldn't vote for it if he did. That was the
situation, and the Governor's whole future, Freckles felt, was at stake.
The bell rang sharply, and he was vaguely conscious then that it had
been ringing before. In the next half-hour he was very busy taking down
the members of the Legislature. Strangely enough, Senator Stacy and the
Governor went down the same trip, and Freckles beamed with approbation
when, he saw them walk out of the building together.
Stacy was one of the first of the senators to return. Freckles sized him
up keenly as he stepped into the elevator, and decided that he was still
firm. But there was a look about Senator Stacy's mouth which suggested
that there was no use in being too sure of him. Freckles considered the
advisability of bursting forth and telling him how much better it would
be to stick with the reform fellows; but just as the boy got his courage
screwed up to speaking point, Senator Stacy got off.
About ten minutes later Freckles had the elevator on the ground floor,
and was sitting there reading a paper, when he heard a step that made
him prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned the corner. He
was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey moustache seemed
to stand out just a little more pompously than ever. There was a
sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the car. It seemed to be
saying: “They thought they could beat me, did they? Oh, they're easy,
they are!”
Freckles McGrath slammed the door of the cage and started the car up. He
did not know what he was going to do, but he had an idea that he did
not want any other passenger. When half way between the basement and the
first floor, he stopped the elevator. He must have time to think. If
he took that man up to the Senate Chamber, he would simply strike
the death-blow to reform! And so he knelt and pretended to be fixing
something, and he thought fast and hard.
“Something broke?” asked an anxious voice.
Freckles looked around into Mr. Ludlow's face, and he saw that the
eminent lobbyist was nervous.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “It's acting queer. Something's all out of
whack.”
“Well, drop it to the basement and let me out,” said Mr. Ludlow sharply.
“Can't drop it,” responded Freckles. “She's stuck.”
Mr. Ludlow came and looked things over, but his knowledge did not extend
to the mechanism of elevators.
“Better call someone to come and take us out,” he said nervously.
Freckles straightened himself up. A glitter had come into his small grey
eyes, and red spots were burning in his freckled cheeks.
“I think she'll run now,” he said.
And she did run. Never in all its history had that State-house elevator
run as it ran then. It rushed past the first and second floors like
a thing let loose, with an utter abandonment that caused the blood to
forsake the eminent lobbyist's face.
“Stop it, boy!” he cried in alarm.
“Can't!” responded Freckles, his voice thick with terror. “Running
away!” he gasped.
“Will it--fall?” whispered the lobbyist.
“I--I think so!” blubbered Freckles.
The central portion of the State-house was very high. Above that part
of the building which was in use there was a long stretch leading to
the tower. The shaft had been built clear up, though practically unused.
Past floors used for store-rooms, past floors used for nothing at
all, they went--the man's face white, the boy wailing out incoherent
supplications. And then, within ten feet of the top of the shaft, and
within a foot of the top floor of the building, the elevator came to
a rickety stop. It wabbled back and forth; it did strange and terrible
things.
“She's falling!” panted Freckles. “Climb!”
And Henry Ludlow climbed. He got the door open, and he clambered up. No
sooner had the man's feet touched the solid floor than Freckles reached
up and slammed the door of the cage. Why he did that he was not sure at
the time. Later he felt that something had warned him not to give his
prisoner's voice a full sweep down the shaft.
Henry Ludlow was far from dull. As he saw the quick but even descent of
the car, he knew that he had been tricked. He would have been more than
human had there not burst from him furious and threatening words. But
what was the use? The car was going down--down--down, and there he was,
perhaps hundreds of feet above any one else in the building--alone,
tricked, beaten!
Of course he tried the door at the head of the winding stairway, knowing
full well that it would be locked. They always kept it locked; he had
heard one of the janitors asking for the keys to take a party up just
a few days before. Perhaps he could get out on top of the building and
make signals of distress. But the door leading outside was locked also.
There he was--helpless. And below--well, below they were passing the
Kelley Bill!
He rattled the grating of the elevator shaft. He made strange, loud
noises, knowing all the while he could not make himself heard. And then
at last, alone in the State-house attic, Henry Ludlow, eminent lobbyist,
sat down on a box and nursed his fury.
Below, Freckles McGrath, the youngest champion of reform in the
building, was putting on a bold front. He laughed and he talked and he
whistled. He took people up and down with as much nonchalance as if he
did not know that up at the top of that shaft angry eyes were
straining themselves for a glimpse of the car, and terrible curses were
descending, literally, upon his stubby red head.
It was a great afternoon at the State-house. Every one thronged to the
doors of the Senate Chamber, where they were putting through the Kelley
Bill. The speeches made in behalf of the measure were brief. The great
thing now was not to make speeches; it was to reach “S” on roll-call
before a man with iron-grey hair and an iron-grey moustache could come
in and say something to the fair-haired member with the weak mouth who
sat near the rear of the chamber.
Freckles was called away just as it went to a vote. When he came back
Senator Kelley was standing out in the corridor, and a great crowd of
men were standing around slapping him on the back. The Governor himself
was standing on the steps of the Senate Chamber; his eyes were bright,
and he was smiling.
Freckles turned his car back to the basement. He wanted to be all
alone for a minute, to dwell in solitude upon the fact that it was he,
Freckles McGrath, who had won this great victory for reform. It was he,
Freckles McGrath, who had assured the Governor's future. Why, perhaps he
had that afternoon made for himself a name which would be handed down in
the histories!
Freckles was a kind little boy, and he knew that an elegant gentleman
could not find the attic any too pleasant a place in which to spend the
afternoon, go he decided to go up and get Mr. Ludlow. It took courage;
but he had won his victory and this was no time for faltering.
There was something gruesome about the long ascent. He thought of
stories he had read of lonely turrets in which men were beheaded, and
otherwise made away with. It seemed he would never come to the top, and
when at last he did it was to find two of the most awful-looking eyes
he had ever seen--eyes that looked as though furies were going to escape
from them--peering down upon him.
The sight of that car, moving smoothly and securely up to the top, and
the sight of that audacious little boy with the freckled face and the
bat-like eyes, that little boy who had played his game so well, who had
wrought such havoc, was too much for Henry Ludlow's self-control. Words
such as he had never used before, such as he would not have supposed
himself capable of using, burst from him. But Freckles stood calmly
gazing up at the infuriated lobbyist, and just as Mr. Ludlow was saying,
“I'll beat your head open, you little brat!” he calmly reversed the
handle and sent the car skimming smoothly to realms below. He was
followed by an angry yell, and then by a loud request to return, but he
heeded them not, and for some time longer the car made its usual rounds
between the basement and the legislative chambers.
In just an hour Freckles tried it again. He sent the car to within three
feet of the attic floor, and then peered through the grating, his
face tied in a knot of interrogation. The eminent lobbyist stood there
gulping down wrath and pride, knowing well enough what was expected of
him.
“Oh--all right,” he muttered at last, and with that much of an
understanding Freckles sent the car up, opened the door, and Henry
Ludlow stepped in.
No word was spoken between them until the light from the floor upon
which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles turned
with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished to get off.
“You may take me down to the office of the Governor,” said Mr. Ludlow
stonily, meaningly.
“Sure,” said Freckles cheerfully. “Guess you'll find the Governor in his
office now. He's been in the Senate most of the afternoon, watching 'em
pass that Kelley Bill.”
Mr. Ludlow's lips drew in tightly. He squared his shoulders, and his
silence was tremendous.
In just fifteen minutes Freckles was sent for from the executive office.
“I demand his discharge!” Mr. Ludlow was saying as the elevator boy
entered.
“It happens you're not running this building,” the Governor returned
with a good deal of acidity. “Though of course,” he added with dignity,
“the matter will be carefully investigated.”
The Governor was one great chuckle inside, and his heart was full of
admiration and gratitude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it
through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real
master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then--imp of salvation
though he was--in the interest of reform, Freckles would have to go.
It was a very innocent looking boy who stood before him and looked
inquiringly into his face.
“William,” began the Governor--Freckles was pained at first, and then
remembered that officially he was William--“this gentleman has made a
very serious charge against you.”
Freckles looked at Mr. Ludlow in a hurt way, and waited for the Governor
to proceed.
“He says,” went on the chief executive, “that you deliberately took him
to the top of the building and wilfully left him there a prisoner all
afternoon. Did you do that?”
“Oh, sir,” burst forth Freckles, “I did the very best I could to save
his life! I was willing to sacrifice mine for him. I--”
“You little liar!” broke in Ludlow.
The Governor held up his hand. “You had your chance. Let him have his.”
“You see, Governor,” began Freckles, as if anxious to set right a great
wrong which had been done him, “the car is acting bad. The engineer said
only this morning it needed a going over. When it took that awful shoot,
I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of
it, but not”--Freckles sniffled pathetically---“but not for anything
like what he says I done. Why Governor,” he went on, ramming his
knuckles into his eyes, “I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take
him to the attic for?”
“Of course not for money,” sneered Mr. Ludlow.
The Governor turned on him sharply. “When you can bring any proof of
that, I'll be ready to hear it. Until you can, you'd better leave it out
of the question.”
“Strange it should have happened this very afternoon,” put in the
eminent lobbyist.
The Governor looked at him with open countenance. “You were especially
interested in something this afternoon? I thought you told me you had no
vital interest here this session.”
There was nothing to be said. Mr. Ludlow said nothing.
“Now, William,” pursued the Governor, fearful in his heart that this
would be Freckles' undoing, “why did you close the door of the shaft
before you started down?”
“Well, you see, sir,” began Freckles, still tremulously, “I'm so used to
closin' doors. Closin' doors has become a kind of second nature with me.
I've been told about it so many times. And up there, though I thought I
was losin' my life, still I didn't neglect my duty.”
The Governor put his hand to his mouth and coughed.
“And why,” he went on, more secure now, for a boy who could get out
of that could get out of anything, “why was it you didn't make some
immediate effort to get Mr. Ludlow down? Why didn't you notify someone,
or do something about it?”
“Why, I supposed, of course, he walked down by the stairs,” cried
Freckles. “I never dreamed he'd want to trust the elevator after the way
she had acted.”
“The door was locked,” snarled the eminent lobbyist.
“Well, now, you see, I didn't know that,” explained Freckles
expansively. “Late in the afternoon I took a run up just to test
the car--and there you were! I never was so surprised in my life. I
supposed, of course, sir, that you'd spent the afternoon in the Senate,
along with everybody else.”
Once more the Governor put his hand to his mouth.
“Your case will come before the executive council at its next meeting,
William. And if anything like this should happen again, you will be
discharged on the spot.” Freckles bowed. “You may go now.”
When he was almost at the door the Governor called to him.
“Don't you think, William,” he said--the Governor felt that he and
Freckles could afford to be generous--“that you should apologise to the
gentleman for the really grave inconvenience to which you have been the
means of subjecting him?”
Freckles' little grey eyes grew steely. He looked at Henry Ludlow, and
there was an ominous silence. Then light broke over his face. “On behalf
of the elevator,” he said, “I apologise.”
And a third time the Governor's hand was raised to his mouth.
The next week Freckles was wearing a signet ring; long and audibly had
he sighed for a ring of such kind and proportions. He was at some pains
in explaining to everyone to whom he showed it that it had been sent him
by “a friend up home.”
V
FROM A TO Z
Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be
breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among
its longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing the dust from
somewhere.
During her senior year at the university, when people would ask: “And
what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard?” she would
respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging to her mind
that idea of getting a position in a publishing house. Her conception of
her publishing house was finished about the same time as her class-day
gown. She was to have a roll-top desk--probably of mahogany--and a big
chair which whirled round like that in the office of the under-graduate
dean. She was to have a little office all by herself, opening on
a bigger office--the little one marked “Private.” There were to be
beautiful rugs--the general effect not unlike the library at the
University Club--books and pictures and cultivated gentlemen who spoke
often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance. She was a little uncertain
as to her duties, but had a general idea about getting down between nine
and ten, reading the morning paper, cutting the latest magazine, and
then “writing something.”
Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had
indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago “publishing house.” This
was her first morning and she was standing at the window looking down
into Dearborn Street while the man who was to have her in charge was
fixing a place for her to sit.
That the publishing house should be on Dearborn Street had been her
first blow, for she had long located her publishing house on that
beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But
the real insult was that this publishing house, instead of having a
building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place
penned off in a bleak, dirty building such as one who had done work in
sociological research instinctively associated with a box factory. And
the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust was that the
partition penning them off did not extend to the ceiling, and the
adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine company, she was face
to face with glaring endorsements of Dr. Bunting's Famous Kidney and
Bladder Cure. Taken all in all there seemed little chance for Greek
tragedies or the Renaissance.
The man who was “running things”--she buried her phraseology with her
dreams--wore a skull cap, and his moustache dragged down below his chin.
Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most unliterary pine
table from a dark corner to a place near the window. That accomplished,
an ostentatious hunt ensued, resulting in the triumphant flourish of
a feather duster. Several knocks at the table, and the dust of many
months--perhaps likewise of many dreams--ascended to a resting place
on the endorsement of Dr. Bunting's Kidney and Bladder Cure. He next
produced a short, straight-backed chair which she recognised as brother
to the one which used to stand behind their kitchen stove. He gave it a
shake, thus delicately indicating that she was receiving special favours
in this matter of an able-bodied chair, and then announced with brisk
satisfaction: “So! Now we are ready to begin.” She murmured a “Thank
you,” seated herself and her buried hopes in this chair which did not
whirl round, and leaned her arms upon a table which did not even dream
in mahogany.
In the _other_ publishing house, one pushed buttons and uniformed
menials appeared--noiselessly, quickly and deferentially. At this
moment a boy with sandy hair brushed straight back in a manner
either statesmanlike or clownlike--things were too involved to know
which--shuffled in with an armful of yellow paper which he flopped down
on the pine table. After a minute he returned with a warbled “Take Me
Back to New York Town” and a paste-pot. And upon his third appearance he
was practising gymnastics with a huge pair of shears, which he finally
presented, grinningly.
There was a long pause, broken only by the sonorous voice of Dr. Bunting
upbraiding someone for not having billed out that stuff to Apple Grove,
and then the sandy-haired boy appeared bearing a large dictionary,
followed by the man in the skull cap behind a dictionary of equal
unwieldiness. These were set down on either side of the yellow paper,
and he who was filling the position of cultivated gentleman pulled up a
chair, briskly.
“Has Professor Lee explained to you the nature of our work?” he wanted
to know.
“No,” she replied, half grimly, a little humourously, and not far from
tearfully, “he didn't--explain.”
“Then it is my pleasure to inform you,” he began, blinking at her
importantly, “that we are engaged here in the making of a dictionary.”
“A _dic--?_” but she swallowed the gasp in the laugh coming up to meet
it, and of their union was born a saving cough.
“Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?” he agreed pleasantly. “Now
you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use most, and
over in that case you will find other references. The main thing”--his
voice sank to an impressive whisper--“is _not_ to infringe the
copyright. The publisher was in yesterday and made a little talk to the
force, and he said that any one who handed in a piece of copy infringing
the copyright simply employed that means of writing his own resignation.
Neat way of putting it, was it not?”
“Yes, _wasn't_ it--neat?” she agreed, wildly.
She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her and taken a
seat at the table next hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries and
getting out his paper. Then the man in the skull cap had risen and
was saying genially: “Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your first
'take'--no copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise
and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these
dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and
Professor Lee assures me you have brains--all the necessary ingredients
for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules printed
to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear. The main
thing”--he bent down and spoke it solemnly--“is _not_ to infringe the
copyright.” With a cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard him saying to
the man at the next table: “Mr. Clifford, I shall have to ask you to be
more careful about getting in promptly at eight.”
She removed the cover from her paste-pot and dabbled a little on a piece
of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece of paper.
She then opened one of her dictionaries and read studiously for fifteen
minutes. That accomplished, she opened the other dictionary and pursued
it for twelve minutes. Then she took the column of “old Webster,” which
had been handed her pasted on a piece of yellow paper, and set about
attempting to commit it to memory. She looked up to be met with the
statement that Mrs. Marjory Van Luce De Vane, after spending years under
the so-called best surgeons of the country, had been cured in six
weeks by Dr. Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. She pushed the
dictionaries petulantly from her, and leaning her very red cheek
upon her hand, her hazel eyes blurred with tears of perplexity and
resentment, her mouth drawn in pathetic little lines of uncertainty,
looked over at the sprawling warehouse on the opposite side of Dearborn
Street. She was just considering the direct manner of writing one's
resignation--not knowing how to infringe the copyright--when a voice
said: “I beg pardon, but I wonder if I can help you any?”
She had never heard a voice like that before. Or, _had_ she heard
it?--and where? She looked at him, a long, startled gaze. Something made
her think of the voice the prince used to have in long-ago dreams. She
looked into a face that was dark and thin and--different. Two very
dark eyes were looking at her kindly, and a mouth which was a baffling
combination of things to be loved and things to be deplored was
twitching a little, as though it would like to join the eyes in a smile,
if it dared.
Because he saw both how funny and how hard it was, she liked him. It
would have been quite different had he seen either one without the
other.
“You can tell me how _not_ to infringe the copyright,” she laughed. “I'm
not sure that I know what a copyright is.”
He laughed--a laugh which belonged with his voice. “Mr. Littletree isn't
as lucid as he thinks he is. I've been here a week or so, and picked up
a few things you might like to know.”