A RISE AND A FALL.
WHEN Emily looked again two of the strikers, one waving a white rag at
the end of a pole, were advancing toward the limp bodies in the centre
of the square. They made three trips. Neither shots nor shouts broke
the silence. Soon the only evidences of the tragedy were the pools and
streaks of blood on the flagging.
Camp was once more at his drawing, rapidly outlining a big sketch of
the scene they had witnessed. “Good stuff, wasn’t it?” he said, looking
up with an apologetic grin and flush. “It couldn’t have been better if
it had been fixed for a theatre.”
“It’ll make a good story,” replied Emily, struggling with some success
to assume the calmly professional air and tone. “I’m going to my room.
If I hear any more shots, I’ll come again. When Mr. Holyoke returns,
please tell him I’d like to see him.”
She had rushed through that hall an hour before, a panic-stricken girl.
She returned a woman, confident of herself. She had seen; she had felt;
she had lived. She sat at her table, and, with little hesitation,
wrote. When she had been at work an hour and a half, Holyoke
interrupted her.
“Oh, I see you’re busy,” he began.
“I wanted to say,” said Emily, “that I shall send a little about the
trouble a while ago--quite independently of the news, you know. So,
just write as if I were not here at all.”
“All right. They’ll want every line we can both send.” Holyoke looked
at her with friendly anxiety. “You look tired,” he said, “as if you’d
been under a strain. It must have been an awful experience for you,
sitting here. Don’t bother to write anything. I’ll sign both our names
to my despatch.”
“Thank you, but I couldn’t let you do that. What were the names of
those people who were killed out in the square?”
“They were a puddler named Jack Farron, and his son Tom, and Tom’s
wife. Tom got married only last week. She insisted on going out with
him. They had been scouting, and had news that the militia were moving
to take the strikers from the rear and rout them out of their position.
You heard about the shooting?”
“No--I saw it,” said Emily. “Mr. Camp and I watched from the parlour
window. Is there going to be more trouble?”
“Not for a good many hours. The ‘scabs’ retreated, and won’t come back
until they’re sure the way is clear.”
Emily took up her pencil and looked at her paper. “I’ll call again
later,” said Holyoke, as he departed. “You can file your despatch
downstairs. The Postal telegraph office is in the hotel.”
She wrote about four thousand words, and went over her “copy” carefully
three times. It did not please her, but she felt that she had told the
facts, and that she had avoided “slopping over”--the great offence
against which every newspaper man and woman who had given her advice
had warned her. She filed the despatch at nine o’clock.
“We can put it on the wire at once,” said the telegraph manager. “We’ll
get a loop straight into the _Democrat_ office. We knew you people
would be flocking here, and so we provided against a crush. We’ve got
plenty of wires and operators.”
Emily ate little of the dinner that had been saved for her, and at each
sudden crash from the kitchen where noisy servants were washing dishes,
her nerves leaped and the blood beat heavily against her temples. She
went back to the little reception room and stood at the window, looking
out into the square. In the bright moonlight she saw the soldiers
marching up and down before the entrance to the stockade. The open
space between it and her was empty, and the soft light flooded round
the great dark stains which marked the site of the tragedy.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” It was Marlowe’s voice, and it so startled
her that she gave a low cry and clasped her clinched hands against her
breast. She had been thinking of him. The death of those lovers, its
reminder of the uncertainty of life and of the necessity of seizing
happiness before it should escape forever, had brought him, or, rather,
love with him as the medium, vividly into her mind.
“You frightened me--I’m seeing ghosts to-night,” she said. “How did you
reach here when there is no train?”
“Several of us hired a special and came down--just an engine and
tender. We fancied there might be more trouble. But it’s all over.
The Union knows it can’t fight the whole State, and the Company is
very apologetic for the killing of those people, especially the woman.
Still, her death may have saved a long and bloody strike. That must
have been an awful scene this afternoon.” He was talking absently. His
eyes, his thoughts were upon her, slender, pale, yet golden.
Emily briefly described what she had seen.
“It’s a pity you didn’t telegraph an account of it. Your picture of
it would have been better than Holyoke’s, even if you didn’t see the
shooting.”
“But I _did_ see it!”
Marlowe’s look became dazed. “What?” he said. “How? Where were you?”
“Upstairs--in the parlour. I was so fascinated that I forgot to be
afraid. And a bullet came through the window.”
He made a gesture as if to catch her in his arms. Instead he took her
hands and kissed them passionately.
“I never dreamed you would be actually in danger,” he said pleadingly.
“I was heedless--I--heedless of you--you who are everything to me.
Forgive me, dear.”
She leaned against the casement, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the sky,
the moonlight making her face ethereal.
“Was I too abrupt?” he asked. “Have I offended in saying it again at
this time?” His exaggerated, nervous anxiety struck him as absurd, for
him, but he admitted that his unprecedented fear of what a woman might
think of him was real.
“No,” she answered. “But--I must go. I’m very tired. And I’m beginning
to feel queer and weak.” She put out her hand. “Good-night,” she said,
her eyes down and her voice very low.
When she was in her room she half-staggered to the bed. “I’ll rest
a moment before I undress,” she thought, and lay down. She did not
awaken until broad daylight. She looked at her watch. “Ten minutes to
twelve--almost noon!” she exclaimed. She had been asleep twelve hours.
As she took a bath and dressed again, she was in high spirits. “It’s
good to be alive,” she said to herself, “to be alive, to be young, to
be free, to be loved, and to--to like it.”
Was she in love with Marlowe? She thought so--or, at least, she was
about to be. But she did not linger upon that. The luxury of being
loved in a way that made her intensely happy was enough. She liked to
think of his arms clasping her. She liked him to touch her. She liked
to remember that look of exalted passion in his eyes, and to know that
it was glowing there for her.
The late afternoon brought news that the strike had been settled by a
compromise. Within an hour the New York special correspondents were
on the way home. At Philadelphia the next morning Emily came into
the restaurant car. “This way, Miss Bromfield,” said the steward,
with a low bow. She wondered how he knew her. She noticed that the
answering smiles she got as she spoke to the newspaper men she had met
at Furnaceville were broader than the occasion seemed to warrant. She
glanced at herself in the mirror to see whether omission or commission
in dressing was the cause. Then she took the seat Marlowe had reserved
for her, opposite himself.
“There were three of us in the dressing-room making it as disagreeable
for each other as possible after the usual feminine fashion,” she
began, and her glance fell upon the first page of the _Democrat_ of the
day before, which Marlowe was holding up. She gasped and stared. “Why!”
she exclaimed, the red flaring up in her face, “where did they get it?
It’s disgraceful!”
“It” was a large reproduction of a pen and ink sketch of herself. Under
“it” in big type was the line, “Emily Bromfield, the _Democrat’s_
Correspondent at the Strike.” Beside “it” under a “scare-head” was the
main story of the strike, and the last line of the heading read, “By
Emily Bromfield.” Then followed her account of what she had seen from
the parlour window. What with astonishment, pleasure, and mortification
over this sudden brazen blare of publicity for herself and her work,
she was on the verge of a nervous outburst.
“Be careful,” said Marlowe. “They’re all looking at you. What I want to
know is where did they get that sketch of you in a dreamy, thoughtful
attitude at a desk covered with papers. It looks like an idyll of a
woman journalist. All the out-of-town papers will be sure to copy that.
But where did our people get it?”
Just then Camp came through on his way to the smoking car. “Who drew
this, Camp?” asked Marlowe, stopping him.
Camp looked embarrassed and grinned. “I made it one day in the office,”
he said to Emily. “They must have fished it out of my desk in the art
room.”
Emily did not wish to hurt his feelings, so she concealed her
irritation. Marlowe said: “A splendid piece of work! Lucky they knew
about it and got it out.”
“Thanks,” said Camp, looking appealingly at Emily. “You’re not
offended?” he asked.
“It gave me a turn,” Emily replied evasively. Camp took her smile for
approval, thanked her and went on.
“You don’t altogether like your fame?” said Marlowe with a teasing
expression. “But you’ll soon get used to it, and then you’ll be cross
if you look in the papers and don’t find your name or a picture of
yourself. That’s the way ‘newspaper notoriety’ affects everybody. They
first loathe, then endure, then pursue.”
“Don’t mock at me, please. It’s good in a business way, isn’t it?
And I’m sure the picture is not bad--in fact, it makes me look
very--intellectual. And as they printed my despatch, that can’t have
been so horribly bad. Altogether I’m beginning to be reconciled and
shall presently be delighted.”
“You can get copies of the paper ready for mailing in the business
office--a reduction on large quantities,” said Marlowe. “And you won’t
need to unwrap them to mark where your friends must look.”
Emily was glancing at her story with pretended indifference. “It makes
more than I thought,” she said carelessly, giving him the paper.
“Vanity! vanity! You know you are dying to read every word of it. I’ll
wager you’ll go through it a dozen times once you are alone. We always
do--at first.”
“Well, why not? It’s a harmless vanity and it ought to be called honest
pride. And--I owe it to you--all to you. And I’m glad it is to _you_
that I owe it.”
At the office she was the centre of interest--for a few hours. “Isn’t
she a perfect picture?” said Miss Farwell to Miss Gresham, as they
watched her receiving congratulations. “And she doesn’t exaggerate
herself. She probably knows that it was her looks and her dresses that
got her the assignment and that make them think she’s wonderful. She
really didn’t write it so very well. You could tell all the way through
that it was a beginner, couldn’t you?”
“Of course it wasn’t a work of genius,” admitted Miss Gresham. “But it
was very good indeed.”
“A story like that simply tells itself.” Miss Farwell used envy’s most
judicial tone. “It couldn’t be spoiled.”
Miss Gresham and Emily went uptown together. “I’ve read my special
several times,” said Emily, “and I don’t feel so set up over it as I
did at first. I suspect they would have rewritten it if it had not got
into the office late.”
“You did wonderfully well,” Miss Gresham assured her. “And you’ve put
yourself in a position where your work will be noted and, if it’s good,
recognised. The hardest thing in the world is to get disentangled from
the crowd so that those above are able to see one.”
The routine of petty assignments into which she sank again was
wearisome and distasteful. She had expected a better kind of work.
Instead, she got the same work as before. As Coleman was giving her one
of these trifles, he looked cautiously round to make sure that no one
was within hearing distance, then said in a low voice: “Don’t blame me
for giving you poor assignments. I have orders from Mr. Stilson--strict
orders.”
Emily did not like Coleman’s treachery to his superior, but her
stronger feeling was anger against Stilson. “Why does he dislike me?”
she thought. “What a mean creature he is. It must be some queer sort
of jealous envy.” She laughed at herself for this vanity. But she had
more faith in it than she thought, and it was with the latent idea of
getting it a prop that she repeated to Miss Gresham what Coleman had
said. “Why do you think Mr. Stilson told him that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I can’t imagine,” replied Miss Gresham. She reflected
a moment and then turned her head so that Emily could not see her
eyes. She thought she had guessed the reason. “Stilson is trying to
save her from the consequences of her vanity,” she said to herself,
“I had better not tell her, as it would do no good and might make her
dislike me.” And watching Emily more closely, she soon discovered
that premature triumph had been a little too much for her good sense.
Emily was entertaining an opinion of herself far higher than the facts
warranted. “Stilson is doing her a service,” Miss Gresham thought, as
Emily complained from time to time of trifling assignments. “He’ll
restore her point of view presently.”
After a month of this Stilson called her into his office. He stood at
the window, tall and stern--he was taller than Marlowe and dark; and
while Marlowe’s expression was one of good-humoured, rather cynical
carelessness, his was grave and haughty.
Without looking at her he began: “Miss Bromfield, we’ve been giving you
a very important kind of work--the small items. They are the test of
a newspaper’s standard of perfection. I’m afraid you don’t appreciate
their importance.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” said Emily coldly.
He frowned, but she watched him narrowly, and saw that he was
suffering acute embarrassment. “It isn’t easy for me to speak to you,”
he went on. “But--it’s necessary. At first you did well. Now--you’re
_not_ doing well.”
There was a long, a painful silence. Then he suddenly looked at
her. And in spite of herself, his expression melted resentment and
obstinacy. “You can do well again,” he said. “Please try.”
The tone of the “Please try” made her feel his fairness and
friendliness as she had not felt it before. “Thank you,” she said
impulsively. “I _will_ try.” She paused at the door and turned.
“Thank you,” she said again, earnestly. He was bending over his
desk and seemed to be giving his attention to his papers. But Emily
understood him well enough now to know that he was trying to hide his
embarrassment. When she was almost hidden from him by the closing door,
she heard him begin to speak. “I beg your pardon,” she said, showing
her head round the edge of the door, “What did you say?”
“No matter,” he replied, and she thought she saw, rather than heard,
something very like a sigh.