CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE OF PROMISED LAND
"Hello, Grace!"
I was passing the society editor in her den a moment later, and shecalled out a cheery greeting, although she didn't look up from hertask. She was polishing her finger-nails as busily as if she lived forher hands--not by them.
"Hello, Jane!"
My very voice was out of alignment, however, as I spoke.
"Are you going to let all the world see that you're not a headstrongwoman?" something inside my pride asked angrily, but as if forcorroboration of my conscientious whisperings, I looked in ashamefaced way at the lines of my palm.--The head-line _was_ weak andisolated--while the heart-line was as crisscrossed as a centipedetrack!
But a heart-line has nothing at all to do with a city editor'sdesk--certainly not on a day when the crumpled balls of copy paperlying about his waste-basket look as if a woman had thrown them! Everyone had missed its mark, and up and down the length of the room thetypewriters were clicking falsetto notes. The files of papers on thetable were in as much confusion as patterns for heathen petticoats ata missionary meeting.
"What's up?"
I had made my way to the desk of the sporting editor, who writespoetry and pretends he's so aerial that he never knows what day of theweek it is, but when you pin him down he can tell you exactly what youwant to know--from the color of the bride's going-away gown to theamount the bridegroom borrowed on his life insurance policy.
"Search me!" he answered--as usual.
"But there's something going on in this office!" I insisted."Everybody looks as exercised as if the baby'd just swallowed amoth-ball."
"Huh?"
He looked around--then opened his eyes wider. "Oh, I believe I didhear 'em say--"
"What?"
"That they can't get hold of that story about the ConsolidatedTraction Company."
"--And damn those foreigners who come over here with their foolnotions of dignity!" broke in the voice of the city editor--thenstopped and blushed when he saw me within ear-shot, for it's a rule ofthe office that no one shall say "damn" without blushing, except thesociety editor and her assistants.
"Who's the foreigner?" I asked, for the sake of warding off apologies.That's why men object so strongly to women mixing up with them inbusiness life. It keeps them eternally apologizing.
"Maitland Tait," he replied.
"Maitland Tait? But that's not foreign. That's perfectly goodEnglish."
"So's he!" the city editor snapped. "It's his confounded JohnBullishness that's causing all the trouble."
"But the traction company's no kin to us, is it?" the poet inquiredcrossly, for he was reporting a double-header in verse, and ourchatter annoyed him.
"Trouble will be kin to us--if somebody doesn't break in on GreatBritain and make him cough up the story," the city editor warned overhis shoulder. "I've already sent Clemons and Bolton and Reade."
"--And it would mean a raise," the poet said, with a tender littlesmile. "A raise!"
"Are you sure?" I asked, after the superior officer had disappeared."I'd like--a raise."
He looked at me contemptuously.
"You don't know what the Consolidated Traction Company is, I suppose?"he asked.
My business on the paper was reporting art meetings at the CarnegieLibrary and donation affairs at settlement homes because the owner andpublisher drank out of the same canteen with my grandfather--and myfellows on the staff called me behind my back their ornamental member.
"I do!" I bristled. "It's located at a greasy place, calledLoomis--and it's something that makes the wheels go round."
He smiled.
"It certainly does in Oldburgh," he said. "It's the biggest thing wehave, next to our own cotton mills and to think that they'rethreatening to take their doll-rags and move to Birmingham and leaveus desolate!"
"Where the iron would be nearer?" I asked, and he fairly beamed.
_"Sure!_ Say, if you know that much about the company's affairs, whydon't you try for this assignment yourself?"
But I shook my head.
"I've got relatives in Alabama--that's how I knew that iron grows ontrees down there," I explained.
"Well--that's what the trouble is about! Oldburgh can't tell whetherthis fellow, Maitland Tait, is going to pack the 'whole blarstedthing, don't you know, into his portmanteau' and tote it off--or buyup more ground here and enlarge the plant so that the company'sgrandchildren will call this place home."
I turned away, feeling very indifferent. Oldburgh's problem was smallcompared with that letter in my hand-bag.
"And he won't tell?" I asked, crossing over to my own desk and fittingthe key in a slipshod fashion.
"He seems to think that silence is the divine right of corporations.Nobody has been able to get a word out of him--nor even to see him."
"Then--they don't know whether he's a human being or a Cockney?"
He leaned across toward me, his elbow flattening two tiers of keys onhis machine.
"Say, the society's column's having fever and ague, too," hewhispered. "The tale records that two of our 'acknowledged leaders'met him in Pittsburgh last winter--and they're at daggers' points nowfor the privilege of killing the fatted calf for him.--The one thatdoes it first is IT, of course, and Jane Lassiter's scared to death!The calf is fat and the knife is sharp--but no report of the killinghas come in."
I laughed. It always makes me laugh when I think how hard some peoplework to get rid of their fatted calves, and how much harder othershave to labor to acquire a veal cutlet.
"Of course he was born in a cabin?" I turned back to the poet andasked, after a little while devoted to my own work, in which I learnedthat my mind wouldn't concentrate sufficiently for me to embroider mystory of an embryo Michaelangelo the Carnegie Art Club had justdiscovered. "A cabin in the Cornish hills--don't you know?"
The sporting editor pulled himself viciously away from histypewriter.
"Ty Cobb--Dry sob--By mob--"
"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
"Can't you see when a poem is about to die a-borning?" he askedfuriously.
"I am sorry--and perhaps I might help you a little," I suggested withbecoming meekness. "How's this?--High job--Nigh rob--"
I paused and he began writing hurriedly. Looking up again he threw mea smile.
"Bully! Grace Christie, you're the light o' my life," he announced,"and--and of course that blamed Englishman was born in a cabin, ifthat's what you want to know."
"It's not that I care, but--they always are," I explained. "They'reborn in a cabin, come across in the steerage amid terrific storms--Whyis it that everybody's story of steerage crossing is stormy?--It seemsto me it would be bad enough without that--then he sold papers for twoyears beneath the cart-wheels around the Battery, and by sheerstrength of brain and brawn, has elevated himself into the proudprivilege of being able to die in a 'carstle' when it suits hisconvenience."
The sporting editor looked solicitous.
"And now, if I were you, to keep from wearing myself out with talking,I'd get on the car and ride out to Glendale Park," he advised.
But I shook my head.
"I can't."
"You really owe it to yourself," he insisted. "You are showingsymptoms of a strange excitement to-day. You look as if you weretalking to keep from doing something more annoying--if such a thingwere possible."
"I'm not going to weep--either from excitement or the effects of yourrudeness," I returned, then wheeling around and facing my desk again Ilet my dual personality take up its song.
"I can and I can't; I will and I won't; I'll be damned if I do-- I'll be damned if I don't!"
The story goes that a queen of Sweden composed this classic many yearsago, but it's certainly the national song of every one who has twopeople living in his skin that are not on speaking terms with eachother.
Then, partly to keep from annoying the poet again, partly because it'sthe thing a woman always does, I took out the letter an
d read it overonce more.
"Coburn-Colt--Philadelphia!"
The paper was a creamy satin, the embossing severely correct, thetyping so neat and businesslike that I could scarcely believe theletter was meant for me when I looked at the outside only.
"Wonder what 'Julien J. Dutweiler' would call a small fortune?" Imuttered. "Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars!--Good heavens,then mother could have all the crepe meteor gowns she wanted withoutmy ever--_ever_ having to marry Guilford Blake for her sake!"
But as I sat there thinking, grandfather took up the cudgelsbravely--even though the people most concerned were Christies and notMoores.
"Think well, Grace! That 'best-selling' clause means not only Maineto California, but England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales andBerwick-on-the-Tweed!" he warned. "Everybody who had ever heard ofeither of these two unfortunate people will buy a copy of the book andread it to find out what really happened!"
"But the letters are hers!" Uncle Lancelot reminded him. "If peopledon't want posterity to know the truth about them they ought toconfine themselves to wireless communications."
"And--what would your Aunt Patricia say?" grandfather kept on. "Whatwould James Christie say? What would Lady Frances Webb say?"
Thinking is certainly a bad habit--especially when your time belongsto somebody else and you are not being paid to think! Nevertheless, Isat there all the afternoon, puzzling my brain, when my brain was notsupposed to wake up and rub its eyes at all inside the _Herald_office. I was being paid to come there and write airy little nothingsfor the _Herald's_ airy little readers, yet I added to my sin ofindecision by absorbing time which wasn't mine.
"Of course the possession of these letters in a way connects you withgreatness," grandfather would say once in a while, in a lenient,musing sort of way. "But I trust that you are not going to let thisfly to your head. Anyway, as the family has always known, your UncleJames Christie didn't leave his letters and papers to his great-niece;he merely _left_ them! True, she was very close to him in his lastdays and he had always loved and trusted her--"
"But there's a difference between trusting a woman and trusting her_with your desk keys_!" Uncle Lancelot interrupted. "Uncle James oughtto have known a thing or two about women by that time!"
"Yet we must realize that the value of the possession wasconsiderable, even in those days," grandfather argued gently. "We mustnot blame his great-niece for what she did. James Mackenzie Christiehad caught the whole fashionable world on the tip of his camel's-hairbrush and pinioned it to canvases which were destined to getdouble-starred notices in guide-books for many a year to come, and thecorrespondence of kings and queens, lords and ladies made a mightyappeal to the young girl's mind."
"Then, that's a sure sign they'd be popular once again," said UncleLancelot. "Of course there's a degree of family pride to beconsidered, but that shouldn't make much difference. The Christieshave always had pride to spare--now's the time to let some of itslide!"
Thus, after hours of time and miles of circling tentatively around thebattlements of Colmere Abbey--the beautiful old place which had beenthe home of Lady Frances Webb--I was called back with a sternsuddenness to my place in the _Herald_ office.
"Can _you_ think of anything else?" the poet's voice begged humbly."I'm trying to match up just plain 'Ty' this time--but I'm dry."
I turned to him forgivingly. I welcomed any diversion.
"Rye, lie, die, sky,--why, what's the matter with your think tank?" Iasked him. "They swarm!"
But before he could thank me, or apologize, the voice of the cityeditor was in the doorway. He himself followed his rasping tones, andas he came in he looked backward over his shoulder at a forlorndejected face outside. He looked at his watch viciously, then snappedthe case as if it were responsible for his spleen.
"Get to work then on something else," he growled. "There's no usespending car fare again to Loomis to-day that I can see! He's anEnglishman--and of course he kisses a teacup at this time of theafternoon."
Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining Page 2
