LIBRARY 
 
 I UNIVERSITY OF 
 VcAUFORNIA 
 
TALES OF THE CITY ROOM 
 
TALES OF 
 THE CITY ROOM 
 
 By 
 ELIZABETH G. JORDAN 
 
 New York 
 
 Charles Scribner s Sons 
 1898 
 
Copyright, 1898, 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS. 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 
 ntbemtg $ress: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. 
 
3 ti 
 - 
 
 TO 
 
 jfatfjer anU fffltotfjet 
 
 WILLIAM F. AND MARGARITA G. JORDAN 
 
 829 
 
Note 
 
 IN stories of newspaper life, "local color" calls for 
 the colloquially technical expressions employed in 
 a newspaper office. Since they are not many, but are 
 constantly used, it may be well to state in a prefatory 
 note their meanings, in order to avoid putting them 
 between quotation marks whenever they occur. 
 
 In newspaper parlance, a reporter takes his "assign 
 ment" from the "city editor" and goes out to work 
 up his " story." The "city editor" is the editor in 
 charge of city news. An " assignment " is the sub 
 ject a reporter is detailed to report upon. A "story" 
 is almost any article in a newspaper except an editorial 
 one. If the other papers fail to get a " story " which 
 one has secured, it is called a "beat" or " exclusive." 
 If the facts a story presents exist nowhere else, it is 
 called a "fake." The manuscript of the story is 
 called "copy," and is submitted to "copy-readers," 
 whose function is to cut, correct, or sometimes re-write 
 it. The place where the city editor and the reporters 
 have their desks is called the "city room." 
 
 The editor-in-chief holds sway over the entire staff. 
 He represents the owner of the newspaper, and directs 
 its editorial policy. Next to him in importance is the 
 managing editor, whose chief executive officers are the 
 city editor, the night editor, and the night city editor. 
 The Sunday editor is responsible for the special fea 
 tures of the Sunday edition, and under him are numerous 
 sub-editors in charge of various departments. 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 RUTH HERRICK S ASSIGNMENT . . i 
 THE LOVE AFFAIR OF CHESTER 
 FIELD, JR 33 
 
 AT THE CLOSE OF THE SECOND DAY 57 
 
 THE WIFE OF THE CANDIDATE . . 79 
 
 MRS. OGILVIE S LOCAL COLOR . . 105 
 
 FROM THE HAND OF DOLORITA . . 121 
 
 THE PASSING OF HOPE ABBOTT . . 151 
 
 A POINT OF ETHICS 163 
 
 A ROMANCE OF THE CITY ROOM . 185 
 
 Miss VAN DYKE S BEST STORY . . 209 
 
 IX 
 
RUTH HERRICK S 
 ASSIGNMENT 
 
Tales 
 of the City Room 
 
 RUTH HERRICK S ASSIGNMENT 
 
 MISS RUTH HERRICK, of the 
 New York Searchlight," had been 
 summoned into the presence of the managing 
 editor. It was without special alacrity that 
 she obeyed the call. Even as she dropped 
 her pen and rose from her desk in the City 
 Room, she seemed to hear the slow drawl 
 of the great man s voice, uttering the words 
 which so often greeted her appearance in his 
 office, 
 
 " Ah, Miss Herrick, I have a big story for 
 you a very big story." 
 
 Usually she felt herself responding to this 
 
 with a pleasant thrill of expectancy. There 
 
 was keen satisfaction to her in the working 
 
 up of a " big story " ; she enjoyed the jour- 
 
 3 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 neys and experiences it frequently included, 
 and the strange characters among whom it 
 often led her. Neither the experiences nor 
 the characters were always wholly agreeable, 
 but she never complained. Even the man 
 aging editor acknowledged this. He had 
 been heard to remark, in an expansive mo 
 ment, that Ruth Herrick was a very superior 
 woman, with no nerves or nonsense about 
 her. The gracious opinion was promptly 
 repeated to the girl, and the memory of it 
 had cheered her during several assignments 
 in which nerves and a woman were equally 
 out of place. 
 
 But to-night she almost rebelled. Strangely 
 enough, she was not ready for the work before 
 her. Her thoughts flew from the bent heads 
 and hurrying pens around her to a dining- 
 room up-town, even now alight and flower- 
 trimmed for the little supper which had been 
 planned to celebrate one of her greatest 
 "beats." "The Searchlight" of that morn 
 ing had contained her story ; the chief and her 
 fellow-reporters had complimented her ; there 
 were pleasant rumors that a more substantial 
 evidence of appreciation would be forthcoming. 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 All day she had idled, enjoying the relaxation 
 from the strain of the past week, and looking 
 forward to that dinner for various and per 
 sonal reasons. The society editor, who had 
 been invited, was just about to leave the office. 
 She saw him wave the last page of his copy 
 triumphantly in the air, as he reached for his 
 hat with the other hand. He was to make 
 the speech of the evening, and he had prom 
 ised his hostess that he would explain to the 
 non-professional guests what a " beat " really 
 means to the newspaper and reporter that 
 secure it. Earlier in the day he had sub 
 mitted his definition to Miss Herrick for her 
 approval. 
 
 " A big beat," he had read solemnly, " is 
 an important exclusive story. If it appears 
 in your newspaper, it is the greatest journal 
 istic feat of the year, implying the possession 
 of superior skill, brains, and journalistic enter 
 prise by the members of your staff. If it ap 
 pears in the other fellow s newspaper, it means 
 that some idiot has accidentally stumbled 
 across a piece of news which does n t amount 
 to much anyway, and which he has garbled 
 painfully in the telling. Your newspaper 
 5 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 gives the correct facts the second day, and 
 calls attention to the c fake story published by 
 your rival. Then you privately censure your 
 city editor and reporters for letting the other 
 newspaper throw them down. Meantime, 
 the other fellow, who published the story 
 first, is patting himself and his reporters on 
 the back, jollying his city and managing 
 editors, and crowing over his achievement on 
 his editorial page. The reporter who brought 
 in the story, or the tip, gets some praise, 
 and possibly a check. His position on the 
 newspaper is secure until he makes his 
 next mistake. Tersely expressed, a beat 
 is a story which only one newspaper gets, 
 and which all the other newspapers wanted. 
 A reporter with the right spirit will move 
 heaven and earth to get it for the journal he 
 represents." 
 
 u I ve just prepared a graceful tribute to 
 you," he called out as he caught her eye. 
 u The chief says you re one of the most re 
 liable members of the staff, can always be 
 depended upon, and all that. They ve been 
 talking about you this afternoon in the edito 
 rial council." 
 
 6 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 Miss Herrick s face flushed a little as she 
 returned his sunny smile. She was still 
 blushing slightly as she entered the managing 
 editor s office. 
 
 That gentleman sat at his desk, barricaded 
 by waste-paper baskets and bundles of proofs. 
 Small and grimy boys trailed in at intervals, 
 adding to the interesting collection before 
 him, telegrams and cards and notes. A 
 habitual furrow between his eyes was deep 
 ened, for the occasion, his visitor told her 
 self in the bitterness of the moment, but 
 the effect was softened by a really charming 
 smile. It was said that " The Searchlight s " 
 presiding genius always wore that smile when 
 he was giving a difficult assignment to one of 
 his staff. It spoke of hope and confidence, 
 and, incidentally, of the futility of excuse and 
 objection. The young reporter had seen it 
 before, and now found herself fixing a fasci 
 nated but hopeless gaze upon it. Her ap 
 prehensions were strengthened by the efforts 
 of a young man with weak eyes and a cor 
 rugated brow, who sat in one corner diligently 
 playing on a typewriter. He stopped long 
 enough to recognize the young woman, and 
 7 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 to run through a brief but expressive panto 
 mime descriptive of the work before her. 
 This habit had endeared him to the members 
 of the staff. 
 
 The managing editor cleared a chair by an 
 energetic sweep of one arm, and, still smiling, 
 looked keenly at the girl through his half- 
 closed lids. Then he asked abruptly : " How 
 much do you know about the Brandow 
 case ? " 
 
 Ruth Herrick s heart leaped suddenly. 
 Was he going to give her that famous case 
 after all ? She had hinted last week that she 
 wanted it, but he had sent Marlowe instead. 
 Marlowe, she had noticed, had made an ig 
 nominious failure of it. She smiled inwardly 
 as she recalled the column of vague conjec 
 ture and suggestions sent in the day before 
 by that unhappy young man. 
 
 " I know that Helen Brandow is accused 
 of having poisoned her husband," she replied 
 quietly, " and that the evidence against her is 
 purely circumstantial. I am familiar with all 
 the theories that have been advanced, includ 
 ing Mr. Marlowe s surmises in c The Search 
 light this morning." 
 
 8 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 The young man at the typewriter looked 
 up quickly at this, but the managing editor s 
 face was impassive. 
 
 " She has refused to see reporters or friends," 
 continued the girl. " So far as can be learned, 
 she has not spoken a word since her arrest. 
 Her trial will begin Monday, and she is 
 awaiting it in the prison at Fairview. She is 
 young and handsome, and her family is one 
 of the best in the State. Public sympathy is 
 wholly with her, and everybody says that she 
 will be acquitted." 
 
 The managing editor s smile reappeared. 
 
 " Good," he said briskly. " I want you 
 to take the first train to Fairview and inter 
 view that woman to-morrow morning." 
 
 " I m almost positive she won t talk," 
 murmured Miss Herrick, doubtfully; but 
 even as she spoke the last spark of rebel 
 lion died out, and she was planning ways 
 and means. 
 
 " It is your business to make her talk," 
 was the encouraging response. " Interview 
 her and write the best story you ever wrote 
 in your life. Every one else has failed. If 
 you are ambitious, here is your chance to 
 9 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 distinguish yourself. I will have a boy at 
 the station with letters which may help you. 
 Good-night." 
 
 Eighteen hours later she sat in the Fair- 
 view prison. It was easy enough to get 
 there. The warden unbent marvellously 
 under the influence of a strong personal 
 letter and Miss Herrick s face. The girl 
 felt quite like a distinguished guest as the 
 stern old fellow spoke of stories of hers 
 which he had read, and newspaper cuts of 
 her which he had seen, " which," he added 
 kindly, " don t look much like you." Then 
 he was led to speak of Mrs. Brandow, to 
 whom he and his wife had become much 
 attached during the long months of her 
 imprisonment. She had been restless and 
 sleepless of late, and had n t eaten much. 
 He mentioned this last circumstance with a 
 feeling he had not shown before. Evidently 
 the sufferings of one who could not eat 
 came keenly home to him. When his wife 
 entered the room, it was with the keys in 
 her hand, and the gratifying announcement 
 that Mrs. Brandow would receive the caller 
 for a few moments. For this Miss Her- 
 10 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 rick mentally thanked the prisoner s lawyer, 
 whose faith in the ability of his client to 
 rebuff reporters had been artlessly displayed 
 during her call on him two hours before. 
 
 When the newspaper woman passed 
 through the door of the cell, her eyes, 
 unaccustomed to the semi-gloom, saw but 
 dimly the outline of a slender, black-robed 
 figure, sitting at a small, plain table. The 
 cell was larger than those in city prisons, 
 and some effort had been made to render 
 it habitable. There was a thick rug be 
 fore the small iron bed, virginal in its white 
 coverings. A heavy cashmere shawl oppo 
 site it concealed the whitewashed walls. 
 The hand which put it there had sought 
 to cover all trace of stone and iron by 
 friendly draperies, but Mrs. Brandow would 
 not have it so. A small dressing-table held 
 a number of silver-backed toilet articles, 
 looking strangely out of place amid their 
 grim surroundings. The light in the cell 
 came through a small window and the 
 barred door leading from the corridor, which 
 was clean and damp, and glaringly white. 
 
 The reporter hesitated an instant, and 
 ii 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 then went quickly forward. The face which 
 turned toward her was not the kind of face 
 she expected to see. Newspaper men had 
 been gushing in their descriptions of the 
 famous prisoner, possibly because their im 
 aginations were stimulated by the fact that 
 many of them had never seen her. Helen 
 Brandow was not really beautiful ; Miss 
 Herrick was quick to recognize that as the 
 other woman advanced to meet her. She 
 made a hasty mental note of the healthily 
 pale complexion, the dark, wavy hair, parted 
 in the centre, the heavy eyebrows, the too 
 firmly closed lips, and the regal carriage of 
 head and body. But it was the prisoner s 
 eyes at which she looked longest, and into 
 which she found herself looking again and 
 again during the interview that followed. 
 They were brown, a tawny brown with 
 yellow lights, but wholly expressionless. 
 They looked into Ruth Herrick s now, 
 coldly, and with no reflection of the half- 
 smile which rested on the prisoner s lips as 
 she motioned toward the chair she had just 
 left, and seated herself on the bed. 
 
 "I feel like an intruder, as I always do 
 12 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 when I am making these unsolicited visits," 
 said the reporter. " I wish I could tell you 
 how I appreciate your kindness in receiving 
 me at all." She was leaning back a little 
 in her chair, and her strong, young face 
 and fair hair were in relief against the rich 
 background of the drapery on the wall. 
 In one quick glance her gray eyes had taken 
 in every detail of the prisoner s surroundings. 
 She looked at the prisoner again, with some 
 thing very frank and womanly in the look. 
 
 " I was not moved by a purely philan 
 thropic spirit," responded Mrs. Brandow. 
 
 She contemplated her visitor with some 
 thing akin to interest, but there was a 
 suggestion of irony in her contralto voice. 
 " Mr. Van Dyke assures me that you will 
 not misrepresent me if I have anything to 
 say," she continued ; " but I have nothing 
 to say. I asked you in to tell you so, and to 
 thank you for the roses, and for your note, 
 both of which pleased me. The letter of 
 introduction you bring convinces me that I 
 am safe in doing this, and that you will not 
 go away and picture me as tearing my hair 
 and deluging my pillow with tears. You 
 13 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 will observe that my hair is in good order, 
 and that the pillow is quite dry." 
 
 " I cannot fancy you less than composed 
 in any circumstances," said her visitor, who 
 found her own composure returning to her, 
 accompanied by a strong sense of surprise 
 and interest in the personality of the woman 
 before her. This was not the Helen Bran- 
 dow of the press, but an infinitely more in 
 teresting character, who should be given to 
 the public, through " The Searchlight," in a 
 pen-picture to be long remembered. Miss 
 Herrick s spirits mounted high at the thought. 
 
 " I am glad you like the roses," she 
 added. " I did not send them to win a 
 welcome, but because a nice old woman 
 in the village gave them to me as I was 
 coming here this morning. She was work 
 ing among them, and the sight was so pretty 
 I could n t help stopping. It made me 
 think of my own home, down South. The 
 roses are the common or garden variety, 
 you see, but they have the delicious, spicy 
 fragrance which seems to belong only to 
 the roses in old-fashioned gardens. The 
 owner of these succumbed to my youthful 
 14 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 charms, and I brought away her best. I 
 felt guilty, but not guilty enough to refuse 
 them. It eased my conscience to leave 
 them here for you." 
 
 Mrs. Brandow regarded her with a faint 
 smile. " It had not occurred to me that the 
 old women in this village spend their time 
 in the peaceful pursuit of rose-growing," she 
 remarked. u When I have been escorted 
 back and forth they have been suspended over 
 picket-fences watching me go by. I never 
 saw any roses or any redeeming traits in the 
 inhabitants." 
 
 " Perhaps you were too preoccupied to 
 notice them. Are n t you becoming a little 
 morbid under this trouble ? " 
 
 The newspaper woman was acutely con 
 scious of her daring as she spoke, but the 
 woman before her was plainly not to be ap 
 proached by ordinary methods. She showed 
 this still more clearly in her reply. 
 
 " Perhaps. I have had no desire for self- 
 analysis of late. I used to tear myself up by 
 the roots to watch my own growth, but the 
 process was not pleasant. I am now trying 
 to confine my attention to the things outside 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 of me. It is less interesting ; occasionally it 
 wearies me. And I always abuse people and 
 institutions when I am weary." 
 
 If there was a personal application in this, 
 Miss Herrick passed it by with the smiling 
 calmness of the trained reporter. " You are 
 quite right," she said cheerfully. " But it 
 would be infinitely more interesting to talk 
 about you than about anything else. I should 
 think you would be forced to turn your eyes 
 inward occasionally, as a refreshing change 
 from the things which weary you." 
 
 " The inner view is no longer pleasant." 
 
 Mrs. Brandow s smile, as she spoke, was 
 not particularly pleasant, either. The re 
 porter s thoughts flew suddenly to a certain 
 Mary Bird, who had lost her reason under 
 peculiarly depressing circumstances, which 
 Miss Herrick had been unfortunate enough to 
 witness. Mary had smiled on the newspaper 
 woman once or twice, and the latter, though 
 not imaginative, remembered the smiles too 
 vividly for her own comfort. When the 
 prisoner spoke again, however, the resem 
 blance, if there had been one, vanished. 
 
 " I have often felt that I should go mad in 
 16 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 this place," she said suddenly, and with a 
 complete change of tone. There was almost 
 an apology in her voice and manner. " But 
 I am quite sane," she added, " and it is a 
 pleasure to me to have you here, and to talk 
 to you. I had not realized, until you came, 
 how much I needed something to break in 
 upon this hideous routine, and change the 
 current of my thoughts. For one year my 
 mind has fed upon itself. I have spoken at 
 the rarest intervals, and then only to the war 
 den and his wife. Now I suddenly find 
 myself struggling with a desire to become 
 garrulous, to pour out my soul to you, as it 
 were. I could almost tell you the story of 
 my life. All this would be an admirable 
 illustration of the limitations of a woman s 
 capacity for silence, but it is n t amusing. 
 It shows me that I am not quite myself; I 
 am nervous and not wholly under my own 
 control." 
 
 " I wish you would talk to me," said the 
 reporter, earnestly. "Use me as a safety- 
 valve. Tell me the story of your life, as you 
 say. It would interest me, and might help 
 you. Or try to imagine that I am an old 
 2 17 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 friend, who wants to know of your life 
 here." 
 
 " If you were, I think you would be pained 
 by the recital. And, besides, if you were, 
 you would not be here. Even my wildest 
 fancies never take the form of yearnings for 
 old friends ; their society would be too de 
 pressing in the circumstances. No, I am 
 glad you are a stranger, with a certain mag 
 netism about you which interests me, and 
 fills me with a silly desire to know what you 
 think of me, and whether you fear me or 
 believe in me." 
 
 " I am sure I could not bear trouble with 
 more philosophy than that you show," said 
 the girl, evasively. She felt a strange reluc 
 tance to analyze her own impressions, but 
 she watched the development of the other s 
 peculiar mood with an odd mingling of 
 womanly sympathy and professional interest. 
 
 " I am not so philosophic as I may seem. 
 I have given myself up to the horror of this 
 place, until, as I said, it has almost unnerved 
 me. If I were myself, I should not be sitting 
 here, talking almost confidentially to you 
 a stranger. Why should the presence and 
 18 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 sympathy of another human being affect me, 
 after what I have suffered and endured ? " 
 
 " You have never been a happy woman ? " 
 
 The reporter looked thoughtfully at the 
 rose she held in her hand as she spoke, and 
 pulled off its petals, one by one. 
 
 " For five years I have been the most mis 
 erable woman on earth." 
 
 The expression of the prisoner s face had 
 changed. The smile was gone ; the brown 
 eyes looked at the fallen petals in the other s 
 lap, with the dreaminess of retrospection in 
 their glance. 
 
 u Five years ago I married," she went on, 
 almost to herself. " Since then I have known 
 the depths of human misery and degradation. 
 Within a week of my marriage I knew ex 
 actly what I had done, I had tied myself 
 for life to the most consummate scoundrel in 
 existence. He spent his time devising ways 
 of persecuting and humiliating me, and his 
 efforts were eminently successful. He made 
 me what I am." 
 
 " You should have separated from him." 
 
 "Yes, but that was impossible. My 
 mother, who is dependent on me, and whom 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 I love as I never loved any one else, lived with 
 us. He was sending my little sister to school. 
 It pleased him to make a parade of what he 
 was doing for my people. And his mother 
 begged me to bear with him, to give him an 
 other chance, as he would go headlong to 
 destruction if cast off entirely. I did bear 
 with him, I gave him every chance, and 
 he he " 
 
 The woman s voice broke. The listener 
 had felt her face flush as the other s words 
 came to her, and now, on a sudden impulse, 
 she took the prisoner s hand. The white 
 ringers closed suddenly upon her own with 
 such force that the stone in a ring she wore 
 sank into the flesh. But the act was in 
 voluntary, for the hand was dropped again 
 with no indication on Mrs. Brandow s face 
 that it had been offered and accepted. 
 
 " He was like an insane man," continued 
 the prisoner, her low voice gathering strength 
 and force as she went on. " He brought 
 persons to the house whom no respectable 
 house should shelter. He forced me to re 
 ceive them and humiliated me before them. 
 I bear to-day the marks of his violence. I 
 20 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 rose in the morning wondering what new 
 and devilish torture awaited me, and I lay 
 quaking in my bed at night knowing that I 
 would soon hear him kicking at my door. I 
 think I was hardly myself during that time, 
 but I endured all while it was I alone who had 
 to suffer. But one night he raised his hand 
 to my old mother, when she was trying to 
 protect me from his brutality, and struck her 
 down. That night I killed him." 
 
 For an instant Ruth Herrick s heart stopped 
 beating, but she sat motionless, watching the 
 woman opposite her. There was no change 
 in her calm face. Mrs. Brandow raised her 
 eyes to it for a moment and dropped them 
 again. 
 
 "I killed him," she repeated dully. "I 
 have said it over to myself a good many 
 times in the awful days and nights I have 
 spent in this place. I have even said it 
 it aloud to hear how it would sound, but it 
 did n t relieve me as it does now. And you 
 you look as if I were talking about an 
 insect. I felt that way at first. It did n t 
 seem to me that he was a human being, and 
 I killed him as I would have killed a poison- 
 21 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 ous thing that attacked me. I gave him 
 poison which I had had for years and which 
 was said to leave no trace. I had intended 
 to take it myself if the worst came to the 
 worst ; I had never dreamed of giving it to 
 him. But I did. It was all done in a 
 minute, and then my God ! " she broke out 
 suddenly. " Can you realize what my life 
 has been since ? Can you imagine the hor 
 rors of my nights here, filled with thoughts 
 of him mouldering in his grave, and put there 
 by me ? When I have fancied my reason 
 leaving me I have almost hoped it would go. 
 But I am sane yet, that I may realize what 
 and where I am, and suffer as I had never 
 dreamed a human creature could suffer and 
 live. Can t you say something ? Or have I 
 gone mad at last, and am I sitting here gib 
 bering to the walls ? Is it so common a 
 thing for you to have murderesses ? " 
 
 " Does your mother know ? " asked the 
 reporter, quietly. They were the first words 
 she had spoken, and she realized fully their 
 possible effect. 
 
 The other woman s form relaxed. She 
 fell on her knees, with her head buried in the 
 22 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 white covering of the little iron bed. The 
 first tears she had shed gushed from her eyes. 
 Her figure rocked as she sobbed and moaned. 
 
 " No, no ! " she said brokenly. " She be 
 lieves in me she does not suspect." 
 
 The newspaper woman dropped her elbows 
 on the table before her, buried her chin in her 
 hands, and thought it over. How it had all 
 come about she could hardly realize. She 
 glanced again at the crouching figure on the 
 floor and wondered vaguely why it had been 
 given to her to watch the awful travail of 
 this woman s soul. Something of the story 
 the public understood. It had furnished the 
 motive for the crime. It was whispered that 
 the death of Jack Brandow had much im 
 proved that part of the country where he had 
 lived and moved. He had goaded this woman 
 to madness. The revolt, the temptation, and 
 the opportunity had presented themselves 
 simultaneously, and she had fallen as stronger 
 women might have fallen, Miss Herrick 
 thought, had they been so tempted. And 
 then had come the awakening, the desolation, 
 the despair. 
 
 Ruth Herrick was usually a cool, unemo- 
 23 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tional young person, but she was profoundly 
 moved now. Many thoughts crowded into 
 her mind. She recalled what she had read 
 of Helen Brandow s past life, the good 
 she had done as a girl at school, her adora 
 tion of her mother, the hundreds of noble 
 men and women who were her friends, and 
 whose faith in her innocence was so stead 
 fast. They were moving heaven and earth 
 to save her now, and when their success 
 had seemed assured she had ruined all by 
 this hour s talk which was just ended. 
 
 Ruth Herrick almost groaned as the situa 
 tion unrolled itself before her. It was some 
 thing she had to face. She knew now that 
 she had suspected almost from the first what 
 the climax might be, and had resolutely put 
 the thought from her. And now she had the 
 " biggest beat " of the year ! Already she 
 could see the commotion in the managing 
 editor s office when the news came in. He 
 would be startled out of his usual calm. He 
 had spoken of her chance to distinguish her 
 self, but even he had asked but an interview. 
 In his wildest imaginings he had not dreamed 
 of a confession. She knew that. But she 
 24 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 had it. If anything but the life of a human 
 being had been at stake, how proudly and 
 gladly she would have gone to him, and 
 how hard she would have tried to write the 
 best story of her life, as he had ordered. 
 But this other woman at her feet. Some 
 thing within the reporter asserted itself as 
 counsel for her and pleaded and would not 
 down. Ruth Herrick s voice seemed to her 
 to come from a long distance when she at 
 last spoke. 
 
 u Do you realize what all this means to 
 you ? Had you forgotten that you were 
 talking to a reporter ? " 
 
 The woman on the floor sat up and raised 
 her face to the speaker s. It was deathly 
 pale, but calm, and the mouth was firm. 
 " I know," she half whispered. " I forgot. 
 But it is just as well. I could not have 
 endured it any longer. It was a great re 
 lief, and I am ready for the end." 
 
 " But if you had not spoken you would 
 
 probably be acquitted. Do you know that ? " 
 
 " It does n t matter," repeated the other, 
 
 wearily. " If I had not told you, I should 
 
 probably have told the warden. My nerves 
 
 25 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 were at the highest tension, and you were 
 present when they snapped. That s all. 
 I am quite willing to bear the consequences 
 of what I have done." 
 
 For a moment there was silence in the 
 cell. The reporter looked through the barred 
 door, out into the whitewashed corridor where 
 a narrow shaft of sunlight fell. To her ex 
 cited imagination there was something pro 
 phetic in the sight. Far down at the end 
 of the hall, a scrub-woman hummed a street 
 air as she worked. Near her loitered the 
 only guard the little prison afforded. The 
 whole life of Helen Brandow if, indeed, 
 she were allowed to live at all would be 
 passed in some such place as this if " The 
 Searchlight " published that story. If it did 
 not Ruth Herrick set her teeth, and 
 stared unseeingly at the opposite wall. If 
 it did not, it would be because she with 
 held the news, to which, by every claim of 
 loyalty, her newspaper was entitled. She 
 withhold it! she, "one of the most re 
 liable members of the staff! " Was it 
 not only last night the chief had said so ? 
 Something hot and wet filled her eyes. 
 26 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 She, the practical ; she, the loyal j she was 
 going to allow her paper to be u thrown 
 down " on the biggest story of the year ! 
 For, above it all, a little refrain sang in her 
 ears, and it was "One more chance, 
 one more chance, one more 
 chance." The scrub-woman seemed to be 
 singing it, too, and it kept time with the 
 clang of an anvil in a shop near by. Ruth 
 Herrick dashed the tears from her eyes, and 
 swallowed a lump that rose in her throat. 
 When she spoke again there was no trace 
 in voice or manner of the mental struggle 
 through which she had passed. 
 
 " I am going to forget this interview," 
 she said. " I am going to let you have the 
 chance which a fair trial will give you. You 
 could not talk to a jury as you have talked 
 to me, but it will not be necessary. You 
 will probably be acquitted. Everybody says 
 so, and a great many people believe in you. 
 And then you will begin life again. No one 
 shall know that I have talked to you, and 
 you must promise me that you will talk to no 
 one else. Do not see another reporter." 
 
 She smiled ironically at this stipulation of 
 27 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 her own. "He might be more loyal than 
 I," she thought. 
 
 " I will do just as you say," said the other 
 woman. She did not understand the sacri 
 fice, but she knew what the decision meant 
 to her. She dipped a towel in water and 
 bathed her face and eyes. Then she took 
 the newspaper woman s hands in her own 
 and kissed them almost shyly. 
 
 "Thank you," she said. "Thank you 
 very much." 
 
 The guard, who had been pacing the cor 
 ridor, turned the key noisily in the lock, and 
 the reporter passed out. She went back to 
 whisper one more warning. " Do not let 
 them put you on the stand." 
 
 She heard the door clang, and the key 
 turn again, as she walked toward the warden s 
 office. 
 
 " That s good," she murmured, in grim 
 self-abasement. " In another moment I 
 should probably have been helping her through 
 the window." 
 
 " So Mrs. Brandow has been acquitted," 
 said the managing editor of " The Search- 
 28 
 
Ruth Herrick s Assignment 
 
 light " to his secretary, as the news came in 
 two weeks later. " And the whole country 
 is shedding tears of joy over her, and they re 
 having bonfires to-night up in Fairview. I 
 believe she s guilty ; but a pretty woman 
 who can hold her tongue will escape the 
 consequences of almost any crime. Strange 
 how Miss Herrick failed on that case ; she 
 felt it, too. Has been working day and 
 night ever since, and all that sort of thing. 
 But, after all, you can t depend on a woman 
 in this business." 
 
 The managing editor was more nearly 
 right than he knew. 
 
 29 
 
THE LOVE AFFAIR OF 
 CHESTERFIELD, JR. 
 
THE LOVE AFFAIR OF 
 CHESTERFIELD, JR. 
 
 EVERYBODY in "The Searchlight" 
 editorial rooms felt that James Vance 
 Cuthbertson was a distinct acquisition to the 
 working force, but perhaps no one realized 
 this quite so keenly as James Vance himself. 
 In appearance he was not impressive. He 
 was small for his age, and his age was but 
 twelve. His light hair clung to his head in 
 such relentlessly tight little curls that his fa 
 cetious associates pointed to this strain on 
 his scalp as the explanation of the frequent 
 headaches from which he suffered. His round 
 young face bore several large and obtrusive 
 freckles, and his clothes were palpably a leg 
 acy from some one of more stalwart frame 
 than himself. But his wide-open blue eyes 
 were clear and honest, and the charm of his 
 manner was recognized and commented upon 
 even by the embittered visitors who awaited 
 the editor s pleasure in the small anteroom 
 over which James held sway. 
 3 33 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 At the little desk in this room the boy pre 
 sided with a dignity far beyond his years. 
 He listened with polite interest to the almost 
 endless tales of woe poured into his ears by 
 the motley throng of men and women with 
 whom he came in contact. He made copious 
 notes of alleged u news tips " brought in by 
 excited citizens, and saw to it that these notes 
 did not obstruct the desk of the city editor. 
 With unfailing courtesy he stood between the 
 staff and the bores that besieged the citadel 
 wherein they worked. With genuine sym 
 pathy he received the subjects of u The 
 Searchlight s " various charity funds and 
 turned them over to the person who had such 
 matters in charge. It was Colonel Everson, 
 one of the leading editorial writers, who 
 dubbed him "Chesterfield, Jr.," and the 
 name was so appropriate that the entire staff 
 adopted it on the instant and rechristened 
 the boy with a bottle of ginger-ale and 
 appropriate accessories. 
 
 From the anteroom in which young Ches 
 terfield sat, doors led to the respective rooms 
 of the managing editor, the city editor, the 
 Sunday editor, and the editor of the humorous 
 34 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 supplement. During the warm days of sum 
 mer these doors were usually open, the slight 
 figure of the youthful sentinel being regarded 
 as a wholly sufficient barrier between visitors 
 and their editorial goal. From his post the 
 boy could see the members of the staff at 
 their respective desks, as well as the easels at 
 which the artists on the Sunday edition 
 worked steadily. Directly in line with his 
 glance was the easel of Miss Frances Neville, 
 one of the cleverest artists on " The Search 
 light." That young woman could be seen 
 toiling industriously at it from ten o clock in 
 the morning until six o clock at night. 
 
 Chesterfield approved of her from the mo 
 ment he saw her. On that memorable occa 
 sion she had beamed on the new boy with 
 one of the gay and debonnaire smiles which it 
 was her wont to distribute impartially along 
 her daily path. It had materially aided the 
 youth to bear with dignity the mild " hazing " 
 to which he was subjected by the other boys 
 in the office during his first week. 
 
 Being wise beyond his years, Chesterfield 
 mentioned to no one his admiration for " The 
 Searchlight s" leading woman artist. He 
 35 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 merely changed his theories regarding the 
 ideal of feminine beauty, reconstructing them 
 on the lines of the perfect realization daily 
 presented to him. Thus, his sister, a " sales 
 lady " in a Sixth Avenue shop, was surprised 
 by an urgent request from her brother to 
 wear her hair " parted down the middle and 
 slicked on the sides," this being Chesterfield s 
 description of Miss Neville s severely simple 
 coiffure. His mother, a stout and matronly 
 laundress of middle age, was startled by her 
 precocious son s feverish desire to have her 
 wear tailor-made gowns henceforth. He 
 even brought her an assortment of collars and 
 cuffs and a ready-made tie as a step in this 
 direction, and was mildly surprised when the 
 result was not an accurate copy of the grace 
 ful and elegant figure in " The Searchlight " 
 office. A few rude jests at his expense 
 checked Chesterfield s home missionary work, 
 but in the office his eyes lingered more fondly 
 than ever on the unconscious object of his 
 soul s content. He attended to Miss Neville s 
 few needs with a celerity that would have 
 been startling in any other than Chesterfield. 
 He listened with greedy ears to the praises of 
 
 36 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 her work which found daily voice in u The 
 Searchlight" editorial rooms. He experi 
 enced his greatest pleasure in turning his 
 artless gaze upon her as he sat at his desk 
 during occasional lulls in his professional 
 duties. He read omnivorously during these 
 restful intervals, and it was an interesting fact 
 that the heroine was always the same a tall 
 and graceful young woman, in severely simple 
 tailor-made attire, with dark brown hair and 
 with eyes that regarded even small office-boys 
 with kindly interest. The authors in vain ob 
 truded their unworthier types : to Chesterfield 
 there was but one Heroine possible in fiction. 
 From passive to active adoration was but 
 a tiny step. He spent hours in writing notes 
 to his inamorata, in which he poured out his 
 youthful heart in misspelled words and mar 
 vellous English. He found much satisfaction 
 in this, though he invariably destroyed the 
 notes as soon as they were written. Then 
 he conceived the plan of writing non-com 
 mittal messages on office business, and this 
 was happiness of a higher order. It put him 
 and the Only One in quasi-intimate relations. 
 Even if he said nothing but u The sitty editur 
 37 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 would like to see you for a minit," could he 
 not sign the note " Yours fathfuly, James 
 Vance Cuthbertson " ? He did this with 
 unction, and Miss Neville read and laughed 
 and forgot in the one moment. 
 
 Emboldened by the success of these efforts, 
 Chesterfield made his next note a little more 
 ambitious. This chef-d oeuvre read as fol 
 lows : 
 
 DEER Miss NEVILLE, Miss Herrick seys to 
 tell you she cudent wate and her and Mrs. Ogilvie 
 went home. 
 
 Yours til deth, 
 
 JAMES VANCE CUTHBERTSON. 
 
 The success of this billet-doux was instan 
 taneous. Within three hours it had made 
 the rounds of " The Searchlight s " editorial 
 rooms and Chesterfield found himself famous. 
 He was effusively complimented on his liter 
 ary style. But the largest drop of bliss in his 
 overflowing cup was to see Miss Neville tuck 
 the note away in her belt "to hold and to 
 cherish," as he inferred, forevermore. 
 
 By the irony of fate, it was at this time, 
 when his sky seemed clearest, that a thunder 
 bolt struck Chesterfield. The rumor of Miss 
 
 38 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 Neville s engagement to Davidson, of the 
 city staff, had circulated freely in the city 
 room several weeks before it reached the boy s 
 ears. When it did, he sternly refused to be 
 lieve that any such tragedy could come into 
 his life. True, he had seen Davidson bend 
 ing over Miss Neville s easel with more of 
 interest than even her masterly art could seem 
 to justify : but all the men on the paper did 
 that more or less, and Chesterfield had rather 
 gloried in such indirect tribute to his own 
 most excellent taste. In the light of the un 
 canny suggestions, however, he watched the 
 couple with a sharply appraising eye, and 
 several glances that he saw pass between 
 them wrung his very soul with suffering. 
 For a day or two his amiability gave way 
 under the shock, and visitors were startled by 
 the transformation of Chesterfield into a 
 grumpy youth who talked out of one side of 
 his mouth in humble imitation of the city 
 editor. 
 
 He was finally forced to acknowledge 
 even to himself the truth of the report. 
 Davidson s devotion to Miss Neville was un 
 mistakable, and, moreover, that lady now 
 39 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 wore on the third finger of her left hand a 
 diamond ring that daily flashed its heartless 
 message to Chesterfield s reluctant eyes. He 
 knew the terrible significance of this, for 
 only the previous week " The Searchlight s " 
 authority on etiquette had devoted much 
 space to the subject of engagements and the 
 question of the ring. With the confirmation 
 of his worst fears, Chesterfield pulled himself 
 together like a man, resumed his wonted 
 amiability, and proceeded to make the best of 
 a life hopelessly wrecked at twelve. Even 
 the news that Miss Neville had resigned her 
 position on "The Searchlight" and was to 
 be married in two months hardly added to the 
 gloom and bitterness of existence. 
 
 He was not so distraught but that he took 
 a warm interest in a conversation he over 
 heard one afternoon between the Sunday 
 editor and the editor of the humorous sup 
 plement. Chesterfield was in the office of 
 the latter, looking over the files for the bene 
 fit of an indignant contributor who was cer 
 tain his article had been printed and not paid 
 for. The first words the boy overheard 
 made him prick up his ears. 
 40 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 u I m surprised to find that it s David 
 son," the humorous editor was saying. " It s 
 such a sneaking, low sort of performance. I 
 did n t think he was capable of it. But here 
 is proof enough to convict any man. This 
 is a bundle of jokes he sent me, and here 
 among them, like a snake in the grass, is a 
 nasty little joke about the Chief, that he 
 evidently wrote for c The Funmaker. Of 
 course, it got among my stuff by mistake, and 
 he 11 want to kick himself when he finds it 
 out. See ? It s on different paper from the 
 others and typewritten. I suppose he was 
 getting up a batch for c The Funmaker and 
 this slipped out of that bundle into mine. 
 It s a pretty bad slip for the young man." 
 
 " So Davidson s the fellow that s been 
 doing that dirty work, is he ? " said the Sun 
 day editor. " Davidson, of all men ! I 
 did n t think he had it in him. Why, he 
 must have been systematically ridiculing in 
 The Funmaker, for a year and a half, the 
 Chief and the paper he has been writing for ! 
 If it had been good-natured stufF it would n t 
 have counted for much, but lots of it is pos 
 itively libellous. The Chief has been trying 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 to find out the writer of these things for 
 months. This joke is a particularly weak 
 one, but it s strong enough to cut off David 
 son s head." 
 
 " Of course," acquiesced the editor of the 
 humorous supplement. He hesitated a mo 
 ment. " He s going to be married next 
 month, to Miss Neville, is n t he ? " he added 
 slowly. 
 
 " That s all right," said the Sunday editor, 
 curtly. " We can t help that. I m sorry 
 for her, but we can t have a man around the 
 shop who is doing the sneak act and libelling 
 the Chief. Let c The Funmaker take him 
 on. It would be as much as our own heads are 
 worth to try and hush this up now. David 
 son must go. That s all there is to it." 
 
 The conversation turned into other chan 
 nels, and the boy, whom neither of the editors 
 had noticed, returned to the irate contributor 
 in the anteroom. He sent that individual 
 away happy, with proofs of the auditor s 
 carelessness, and returned to his desk to re 
 flect on the conversation he had overheard. 
 From his seat he could see Miss Neville s 
 smooth hair and fine profile as she bent over 
 42 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 her work. This was to be her last week at 
 the office. 
 
 Chesterfield regarded her with gloom on 
 his young brow. Of course if Davidson lost 
 his position now they could not be married. 
 Even if he secured another place immediately 
 he would wish to assure himself of perma 
 nence there before taking a wife to support. 
 Chesterfield pitied them both profoundly, for 
 he could not see that the crime deserved that 
 so heavy a punishment should be meted out 
 to it. Everybody had laughed over u The 
 Funmaker s " jokes about " The Search 
 light " even the office boys. Chesterfield 
 had thought them very bright and had specu 
 lated with awe over the cleverness of the 
 unknown writer. The boy had been in 
 spired to write a few jokes himself and sub 
 mit them to the good-natured editor of " The 
 Searchlight s " humorous supplement. He 
 recalled once more, with burning cheeks, the 
 shouts of laughter with which that gentle 
 man had read his efforts, laughter, Ches 
 terfield fully realized, not called forth by the 
 point or caustic style of the jokes. The boy had 
 borne no malice, but he had thenceforward re- 
 43 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tained his humorous productions in the private 
 archives of his own desk, where they continued 
 to increase in quantity if not in quality. 
 
 It was a pity to " fire " Davidson for do 
 ing such clever outside work, Chesterfield 
 thought, especially when it would interfere 
 with his marriage. They oughtn t to do it 
 it was n t right. The evidence against 
 Davidson was only circumstantial at best. 
 A dutiful perusal of reports of murder trials 
 had shown Chesterfield how much such evi 
 dence could be relied on. According to 
 Kelly, the humorous editor, the very paper 
 on which the offending paragraph was printed 
 was different from that in Davidson s bundle 
 of manuscript. It was written on the type 
 writer, too. Some one else might have written 
 it. Some one else might say he had ! 
 
 Chesterfield was interrupted in his reverie by 
 a change in Miss Neville s position. She was 
 beckoning to him. He was at her side in an 
 instant, and as she glanced down at him he 
 saw that her brown eyes looked dim and tired. 
 
 u I ve a headache, Chesterfield," she said, 
 laying a hand lightly on her young knight s 
 shoulder. " Will you go down to the chem- 
 44 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 ist s and get this prescription filled for me ? 
 You need not wait have them send it up. 
 But pay for it, and keep the change." She 
 slipped a silver dollar into his hand. 
 
 "You look tired, too," she added, with 
 that beautiful sympathy only she could ex 
 hibit, as she turned again to her work. " I 
 prescribe a glass of soda-water for you, to be 
 taken before you come back." 
 
 Chesterfield retreated, his whole small 
 frame one delicious glow. As he drank the 
 soda-water reverently, while waiting for the 
 prescription to be put up, his young heart 
 swelled. She had rested her hand on his 
 shoulder, she had noticed that he was tired, 
 she was treating him to soda-water this very 
 minute. Did ever a boy have such a divin 
 ity to worship ? The question was an abso 
 lutely rhetorical one for Chesterfield. He 
 returned to his desk and wrote her a note to 
 accompany the prescription. 
 
 DEAR Miss NEVILLE, The sody-water was 
 very nice. I think it did me good. I hop your 
 hed is beter. 
 
 Yours as ever, 
 
 CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 45 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 As he read it over before sealing the en 
 velope the closing phrase struck him as beau 
 tifully felicitous. 
 
 " She 11 see that her being engaged don t 
 make no difference in my feelings," he told 
 himself. Then he pondered for a long time. 
 Finally, as the outcome of his reflections, he 
 betook himself to Mr. Kelly s office, with 
 the inward sentiments of a youthful martyr 
 approaching the stake. 
 
 The editor glanced up wearily from the 
 jokes he was reading at the odd little figure 
 which had halted at his desk. 
 
 " Who is it ? " he asked, extending his hand 
 to receive the card he supposed the boy had 
 brought. 
 
 "It s just me," said Chesterfield, elegantly. 
 "I I want to speak to you a minute." 
 
 " More jokes ? " laughed the young man. 
 He liked Chesterfield, as all the editors did. 
 He noticed that the boy looked pale and 
 frightened, and he spoke to him more pleas 
 antly than ever. 
 
 " Anything wrong at home ? " he asked. 
 N no, sir," said Chesterfield. "It s 
 it s about that joke I heard you and Mr. 
 46 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 Marbury talking about, the one you thought 
 Mr. Davidson wrote. I I did n t think 
 there was any harm in it. Anyhow, I ain t 
 goin to let him shoulder it. I thought you 
 knew my jokes," finished the boy, desperately. 
 The thing was harder to do than he had 
 imagined, and the embarrassment he had felt 
 in the beginning developed into a nervous 
 fear. His evident suffering as he wriggled 
 uneasily under the cool gray eyes of the editor 
 led that young man to consider his statement, 
 startling though it was. 
 
 " Tell me all about it," said Mr. Kelly, 
 briefly. 
 
 " I ve been writing jokes, you know," 
 stammered the self-accusing culprit, " an I 
 thought one like c The Funmaker publishes 
 would go if t was polished up." Chesterfield 
 had heard this expression used freely around 
 the office and he could n t resist introducing 
 it at this point, where it seemed most appro 
 priately telling. The editor turned his head 
 hastily to conceal a smile, but the maker of 
 jokes saw the telltale twitch of the lips and 
 went on with reviving courage. 
 
 " I did n t dast to turn it in as mine," he 
 47 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 continued, " cos you laughed at my other 
 ones so. If you come on it among some 
 other things I thought maybe you d say 
 something about it without knowing it was 
 mine. But after what I heard you say I had 
 to come to you and tell you." 
 
 He stopped for breath. The editor looked 
 at him keenly and then said with terrible 
 impressiveness, 
 
 u Well, James, you seem to have got your 
 self into a nice mess." 
 
 Chesterfield s heart sank. He did n t like 
 the editor s tone, and in his darkest imagin 
 ings it had not occurred to him that he would 
 be called " James " by the young man who 
 had always been so kind to him. He looked 
 up at Mr. Kelly with something in his eyes 
 that touched that journalistic genius. 
 
 " I suppose, Chesterfield," he said more 
 lightly, " that you claim to be the proud 
 author of all The Funmaker s jokes roast 
 ing The Searchlight/ " 
 
 " Oh, no, sir. Deed I don t," said Ches 
 terfield, refuting this charge with vigor. " I 
 would n t write them things against the paper. 
 I did n t think this one was so " 
 48 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 The words died on his lips. Coming 
 through the door, with his most d ebonnaire air, 
 was the luckless Davidson here apparently 
 to hopelessly tangle up again what had been 
 so adroitly straightened out for him. 
 
 " Was my stuff all right, old man ? " he 
 asked Kelly, cheerily. 
 
 Kelly looked up with an apolegetic smile. 
 
 " Yes, it was," he said, " and we owe you an 
 apology, Davidson. We found a nasty little 
 joke about l The Searchlight on my desk and 
 thought you had written it and all that c Fun- 
 maker stuff. Marbury was hot about it, and 
 there was a heap of trouble ahead of you, 
 when this little rat [indicating Chesterfield] 
 comes and owns up to it because he heard 
 us talking about it as yours. He slipped it 
 into the stuff on my desk." He turned to the 
 boy with sudden suspicion. " How did you 
 get it typewritten ? " he asked. 
 
 " Miss Smith lets me practise on her type 
 writer when she s out to lunch," said the boy, 
 telling the truth promptly, " cos I want to 
 learn." 
 
 This Kelly knew to be true, for he had 
 seen the boy manipulating the keys. It ban- 
 4 49 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 ished the editor s last doubt. In his quick 
 glance toward the boy he had failed to see 
 the slight flush on Davidson s face, and now 
 as he turned his attention to him he also 
 missed the warning glance Chesterfield shot 
 at his successful rival in the affections of 
 Miss Neville. 
 
 " Go back to your post, James," said 
 Kelly, blandly. " We 11 attend to your case 
 later." 
 
 Chesterfield went with a heavy heart. He 
 was not especially cheered by the sight of 
 Kelly and the Sunday editor in close con 
 verse half an hour later. He was in reality 
 far from their thoughts, but the boy, though 
 he had surprised even himself by his diplo 
 macy, felt they were sealing his doom with 
 promptness and despatch. He would be 
 " fired," he told himself, drearily, and his 
 hard-working mother in the little Staten 
 Island home would miss the six dollars which 
 he loyally handed over to her every Saturday 
 night. 
 
 His gloom was not dispelled by the appear 
 ance of Davidson, who swung out of the 
 office door, whistling a popular street air. 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 He stopped as he reached the boy and clapped 
 him on the shoulder. The anteroom was 
 empty save for the two. The doors behind 
 them were closed, and they were, for the 
 moment, safe from observation. 
 
 " By Jove, that was a close call ! " said 
 Davidson, wiping his face and dropping his 
 happy-go-lucky air. " Chesterfield, you re a 
 little trump ! I don t know why the dickens 
 you did this thing for me, but I m awfully 
 grateful to you. If they had found me out it 
 would have been all up with John Davidson. 
 I 11 make it up to you, somehow, and if they 
 had c fired you, I would have found another 
 place for you. But they won t Kelly told 
 me so. You re too popular. I don t wonder 
 at your popularity," he added, with some enthu 
 siasm, " if this is the kind of thing you do." 
 
 Chesterfield twisted himself uneasily from 
 beneath the caressing hand. 
 
 " You need n t bother about me," he said 
 gruffly. He had been prevaricating to Mr. 
 Kelly so freely that it was a relief not to 
 disguise the truth now. He indicated with 
 his finger the closed door between them and 
 Miss Neville. 
 
 5 1 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 " I ain t done this thing for you," he said 
 shortly. "I done it for her. If you d got 
 fired you could n t marry her and she 
 might have been disappointed." 
 
 " Yes," acquiesced Davidson, thought 
 fully, " she might. I might have been 
 disappointed, too, but I see you did n t let 
 that thought influence you. Believe me, my 
 boy," he added seriously, " I appreciate any 
 thing you do for Miss Neville much more 
 than if you had done it for me. I hope you 
 will let me thank you for us both." 
 
 He extended his hand, into which, after an 
 instant s hesitation, Chesterfield gravely put 
 his own small paw. Davidson looked at 
 him with a peculiar expression in his hand 
 some eyes. 
 
 " You re a trump, Chesterfield ! " he re 
 peated feelingly. 
 
 He put his hands on the boy s shoulders, 
 help him off at arm s length and looked him 
 over. 
 
 " Chesterfield," he added thoughtfully, 
 
 " I have observed that your clothes are not 
 
 altogether suited to a young gentleman in 
 
 your position. For example, you are wearing 
 
 52 
 
The Love Affair of Chesterfield, Jr. 
 
 knee pants. If you 11 meet me at Swift 
 and Prang s clothing store at half-past six 
 to-night we 11 see what they can do to fit 
 you out with clothes that are more suitable 
 to your style. I think they should include 
 trousers of the most correct and elegant cut." 
 
 Chesterfield, Jr., was a small boy whose 
 views of life and conduct, when not exalted 
 by the inspiration of the goddess of his youth 
 ful heart, Miss Neville, were eminently prac 
 tical and clear-headed. He knew that he 
 would not have undertaken the heroic role he 
 had except for her. That Davidson should 
 feel constrained to some return for the benefit 
 he had incidentally derived from it was only 
 a worthy sentiment on his part. But if 
 Chesterfield accepted this largess of clothing 
 it was still principally through thought of 
 her. She would see him in the trousers ! 
 
 " I 11 be there," he replied briefly. 
 
 S3 
 
AT THE CLOSE OF THE 
 SECOND DAY 
 
 55 
 
AT THE CLOSE OF THE SECOND 
 DAY. 
 
 THE little room, high up in the rear of 
 the old-fashioned New York house, 
 had come to seem like home to its occupant. 
 Its small window overlooked the garden of 
 a German neighbor who had cultivated, in 
 his ten by twelve expanse of ground, a riot 
 of blooming sweet peas, scarlet geraniums, 
 and sturdy vines that reached out over the ad 
 joining walls in most friendly fashion. Busy 
 bees had found the little honey mart in the 
 heart of the big city, and their buzzing, as 
 they worked among the flowers, added the 
 final touch to the homely charm of the 
 place. 
 
 Virginia Imboden looked at the familiar 
 scene with unseeing eyes, her forehead pressed 
 dismally against the window-pane. Before 
 her was this artless evidence of simple pros 
 perity. In the street, beyond the garden 
 wall, white-frocked children played about, 
 daintily regardful of their clothes. The 
 57 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 warm summer breeze that had been dallying 
 among the geraniums suddenly bore up to 
 her the tones of a street organ. The music, 
 softened by distance, came faintly to her ears, 
 and her lips twitched rather sardonically as 
 she recognized the familiar strains of the 
 " Miserere." It seemed a fitting touch of 
 irony that the old air should be dinned into 
 her ears at the moment of her own surrender 
 to despair. She recalled the last time she had 
 heard it. One of Herforth s political victims 
 had sent him a box for the opera, and that 
 hospitable youth had invited rather more of 
 his friends than the box would hold to enjoy 
 the music with him. They had had a jolly 
 time. Miss Imboden s dark eyes twinkled as 
 she recalled it. After the opera they had 
 indulged in a little supper a very good 
 supper, she remembered. She mentally and 
 lingeringly called up the various items of the 
 bill of fare. They had begun with steamed 
 oysters, followed by mallard duck with jelly, 
 celery, and champagne, and ending with the 
 reckless conbination of lobster salad and ices. 
 How good it had all tasted ! Miss Imboden 
 looked around the clean, bare little room with 
 
 58 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 something very like a groan; for Miss 
 Imboden was hungry. 
 
 The bald statement, as she repeated it to 
 herself, was as convincing as the landlady s 
 remarks had been half an hour before, when 
 that stout person had toiled up the stairs for 
 a few moments of serious converse with her 
 young lodger. She had informed Miss Im 
 boden that she herself was honored in the 
 neighborhood as a woman who paid her bills 
 promptly, and she had then solicitously in 
 quired how she could be expected to main 
 tain that enviable reputation unless her 
 lodgers paid her. The questions embar 
 rassed the young woman on the top floor, 
 back. Miss Imboden admitted that she had 
 not paid her room rent for five weeks. She 
 went further, and recklessly stated that there 
 were no present indications of her being able 
 to pay it for five weeks to come. Where 
 upon the interview had concluded rather un 
 pleasantly, with Mrs. Smith s concise request 
 for the key and the room " as early Monday 
 morning as you can make it convenient, if 
 you please." 
 
 Miss Imboden was not, as a rule, easily 
 59 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 depressed, but her heart had sunk as she 
 found herself alone again, looking out on the 
 little garden which had been such a comfort 
 to her through the long, hot summer. In 
 her thoughts she had facetiously called it hers, 
 and she had criticised freely the amateur gar 
 dening of the simple old man who had pot 
 tered happily up and down the narrow path 
 with his ubiquitous watering can. She would 
 have made that garden like the one she loved 
 out West, with its lilies of the valley and its 
 wealth of sweet-scented, homely mignonette. 
 Over in the corner where he had planted 
 those gaudy geraniums she would have put 
 but she was going away the day after to 
 morrow to leave it all behind her. Going 
 away, though she knew of no place to go. 
 And she had eaten nothing for two days, and 
 she was hungry. 
 
 That stubborn fact presented itself with 
 malevolent persistence and would not down. 
 She had never before been really hungry. 
 Sometimes, after long tramps over the moun 
 tains or glorious days on the sea, she had 
 thought she was. But the healthy appetite 
 with which she had sat down to the table 
 60 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 then had been a wholly different thing from 
 this gnawing sensation that was so new 
 and so terrible. She discovered with alarm 
 that she was growing faint. That last inter 
 view with the landlady had not been a pleas 
 ant experience for a proud woman. 
 
 " She seemed annoyed because I have n t 
 any money," said the girl to herself, drearily. 
 " I m quite sure she s not so acutely incon 
 venienced by it as I am." 
 
 She looked around the room in the vain 
 effort to discover something of her own that 
 had not yet been pawned. There was nothing. 
 The trifles adapted to that sort of business 
 negotiation had gone one by one during a 
 u hard luck period," of which she had heard 
 her professional friends speak but which she 
 had never thought to experience herself. 
 When she had unexpectedly lost her position 
 on "The Globe," and the "hard luck 
 period " began, she had at first rather enjoyed 
 the novelty. It was interesting to speculate 
 as to how long her money would last. It had 
 been interesting, and "developing, too," she 
 told herself, to pawn her belongings when 
 the money was gone, and to live on two 
 61 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 cheap meals a day. But the charm faded as 
 the novelty wore off, and when the two meals 
 became one meal, and finally, as to-day and 
 yesterday, no meal, Miss Imboden sighed 
 for vulgar affluence. It was the dull season. 
 There was no hope of securing a position 
 until fall and to-day was Saturday, the 
 twenty-fifth of August. All her friends were 
 out of town. The two or three newspaper 
 associates whom she knew intimately enough 
 to go to in such straits were away on their 
 vacations. There was absolutely no one 
 from whom she could or would borrow and 
 she was hungry. 
 
 She put on her hat and thrust the pin 
 through her soft brown hair. She had not 
 pawned her clothes she could not afford to 
 do that, she had told herself. She would 
 make a good appearance to the last, and if 
 the morgue was inevitable, perhaps she would 
 be treated as a gentlewoman should be treated 
 a gentlewoman in " temporary financial 
 difficulties." There was nothing suggestive 
 of these about the slight, elegant figure in its 
 well-fitting tailor-made gown. Her shoes and 
 gloves were perfect, her hat a becoming little 
 62 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 French " confection," bought in the prosper 
 ous days of early spring, and the face be 
 neath it a charming one, notwithstanding its 
 pallor and the peculiar expression in the big, 
 dark eyes. 
 
 " Good-by," said Miss Imboden, bowing 
 with much elegance to her reflection in the 
 small mirror on the mantel. u I m going 
 out and perhaps I shall not see you again. 
 I may go to the river but I m sorry, for it 
 seems to me that you and I, if you re the 
 body and I m the soul addressing it, deserve 
 a better fate than that. We ve done very 
 well together for twenty-five years, and if 
 we re overthrown now it s not our fault/ 
 
 She stood silent, looking into the brown 
 eyes that looked so bravely back at her. She 
 saw them fill suddenly, and she pressed her 
 handkerchief against her face with a little 
 sob. 
 
 " I wonder if it s all a horrible nightmare," 
 she murmured aloud " or perhaps I m los 
 ing my mind." She pulled down her veil 
 and left the room without a glance behind. 
 The landlady heard her light steps going 
 down the stairs and experienced for a moment 
 
 63 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 a slight qualm of conscience. She was not 
 a hard-hearted woman, but she had been irri 
 tated by the girl s apparent gay indifference 
 to her position. She did not realize that it 
 was assumed to hide a depth of depression 
 which she would have been equally at a loss 
 to understand. 
 
 Miss Imboden strolled down the street in 
 the bright warm sunshine, resolutely refusing 
 to consider a few morbid suggestions which 
 her exhausted nerves communicated to her 
 brain. She had decided to make a last effort 
 to collect from the editor of an obscure little 
 periodical a few dollars which he had prom 
 ised her for an accepted manuscript. If he 
 could be induced to advance this money 
 before the publication of the article, it would 
 tide her over a day or two and who could 
 tell what would happen then ? She had no 
 money for car-fare, so she made the hot and 
 weary journey on foot, to be met by disap 
 pointment at the end. She had quite for 
 gotten that it was Saturday, and that the 
 office closed at two o clock on that day. She 
 looked at the barred door with dull resent 
 ment. She had built her hopes on the editor 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 more strongly than she had realized, and the 
 sudden disappointment almost stunned her. 
 As she came out of the building in which 
 " The Woman s Banner " was published, 
 she glanced at the clock in the window of 
 a neighboring jeweller and saw that it was 
 after five. Happy men and women were 
 hurrying along the street on their way to 
 dinner, at least, they moved briskly and 
 seemed happy. The cable cars that rounded 
 " Dead Man s Curve " bore a freight of for 
 tunate human beings going home to dinner ! 
 The organ man who ground out the ghostly 
 strains of long-forgotten airs on a wheezy 
 little instrument near the corner would soon 
 go home to dinner. The world was full of 
 people to whom dinner was a cheerful com 
 monplace, while to her 
 
 A passing woman, clad in a shabby black 
 gown, had hesitated and was looking at her 
 sympathetically. Miss Imboden realized, with 
 a sudden flush, that she must have staggered 
 a trifle and that she was now standing still. 
 She pulled herself together and went on, her 
 head proudly erect. " To the river," said 
 the morbid voice within and for the first 
 5 65 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 time that dreary possibility began to put on 
 the guise of the probable. 
 
 As she turned toward Broadway she heard 
 quick steps beside her and glanced up with 
 a smile, expecting to see the sympathetic face 
 of the woman in black. Instead, she looked 
 into a pair of dark gray eyes under heavy 
 brows which almost met over a sharply aqui 
 line nose. She saw an immaculate silk hat 
 raised, and became at the same time aware 
 that this very handsome, well-dressed stranger 
 was speaking to her. 
 
 " Good-evening," said that individual, with 
 genial coolness. 
 
 u Good-evening," replied Miss Imboden, 
 with indecision. 
 
 The erect military figure beside her adapted 
 his step to hers and walked on by her side 
 like an old acquaintance. 
 
 u May I ask where you are going ? " he said. 
 
 His voice had the quiet interest and as 
 sured tone of a friendship which warranted 
 the question. Miss Imboden, who appreci 
 ated the artistic, appreciated it even in these 
 trying circumstances. She hesitated a mo 
 ment then let herself drift with the tide. 
 66 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 " I m going to dinner," she announced 
 firmly. 
 
 " May I beg that you will take pity on 
 me and dine with me ? " suggested her new 
 companion. " I m a stranger in the city and 
 lonely. Your face, as I passed you, looked 
 very much as I felt. I took the liberty of 
 following you and speaking to you like a 
 beggar asking alms. Won t you give me 
 the pleasure of your company for an hour 
 or two over our dinner ? " 
 
 It was all wrong, conventionally wrong. 
 Miss Imboden was acutely conscious of that. 
 But the river would be all wrong, too, and 
 surely this gnawing hunger, this faintness, this 
 queer feeling in her head were wrong as well. 
 Better dinner with a stranger than the river 
 by herself. She would accept his invitation, 
 yes, but under no false pretences. 
 
 u Thank you," she said with quiet dignity, 
 "I will dine with you, with pleasure. I have 
 not dined for two days." 
 
 He looked at her with a start, and the eyes 
 of the man of the world read the truth in the 
 face beside him. He muttered a startled 
 ejaculation under his breath, and, quickening 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 his step, took her to a large restaurant, not 
 many blocks away. He established her in 
 a cosey corner by the window, where the 
 summer breeze blew in upon her, laden with 
 the perfume of the mignonette that blossomed 
 on the window-sill. She was glad to see her 
 favorite flower here. It seemed a happy 
 omen, a home sanction on a course erratic 
 but blameless. She leaned back in her chair 
 and wondered why the tables and diners 
 seemed so far away, and why the voice of 
 the waiter came to her from such a distance. 
 She was aroused by the sensation of having 
 something go stinging down her throat, some 
 thing that put new life into her. The stranger 
 was holding a glass to her lips and the waiter 
 stood by with water. 
 
 " It s the heat," she heard her escort say to 
 him. "She s a little overcome by it. She 
 has been out in the sun too long. She 11 be 
 better when she has eaten something. Bring 
 the soup as soon as you can." 
 
 She sat up, mechanically straightening her 
 hat. " I beg your pardon," she said simply. 
 " I feel quite myself now. Thank you." 
 
 " What a thoroughbred she is ! " he thought. 
 68 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 He repeated the inward comment as he 
 watched her eat her soup as deliberately and 
 daintily as if she had risen from the luncheon 
 table but a few hours before. She looked up 
 when the waiter removed the plates, and the 
 ready laughter bubbled to her eyes and looked 
 out at him in a quizzical little gleam. She 
 was quite herself again, and she suddenly de 
 termined that he should have as pleasant an 
 hour as it was in her power to give him. He 
 was doing a corporal work of mercy feed 
 ing the hungry. She would do a spiritual 
 work of mercy comfort the lonely. His 
 eyes were bent on the bill of fare and he was 
 giving his order to the waiter with the seri 
 ousness which the importance of the occasion 
 demanded. She took advantage of the op 
 portunity to study his face. It was a hand 
 some face beautiful, she decided, because 
 there was soul in it. His complexion, though 
 dark, was very clear, and the gray eyes, beneath 
 their long lashes, had an almost boyish frank 
 ness. They looked up at her as the waiter 
 departed, and his white teeth flashed in a 
 quick response to the faint smile he saw on 
 her lips. 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 " You feel better, don t you ? " he re 
 marked, looking at her with gay friendliness. 
 " I m not going to ask you anything about it 
 yet. Perhaps, later, you 11 tell me. For the 
 present, we re going to play that we ve been 
 friends for a thousand years, through all sorts 
 of incarnations, as it were. I really believe 
 we have, don t you ? " 
 
 She smiled back at him with as frank a 
 friendliness as his own. 
 
 " According to the theosophists," she said, 
 " our souls have recognized each other. They 
 always do, through any number of incarna 
 tions, if they are really congenial and friendly. 
 They recognize their enemies of past incar 
 nations, too, and so, when you meet a man 
 and take what you think is an unreasonable 
 dislike to him, it simply means that you and 
 he have had some trouble in another life and 
 that the soul has recognized its enemy. You 
 were kind to me a thousand years ago, and I 
 remember it." 
 
 " It s a refreshing theory," said her com 
 panion, gratefully. " It lessens the strain on 
 one s mind. When you find yourself loath 
 ing a fellow you can accept the condition as 
 70 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 a matter of course instead of speculating about 
 it and fearing that you are doing him an in 
 justice. You need merely say to yourself, 
 c Well, he acted so badly in that seventeenth 
 incarnation of his that no self-respecting man 
 could have anything to do with him now. 
 Whereupon you dismiss him from your mind 
 with a contented smile." 
 
 He helped her to the fish as he spoke, and 
 they drifted into a light-hearted talk which 
 developed a similarity of taste and point of 
 view that surprised them both. Over the 
 salad he told her of his experiences as a civil 
 engineer in Central America, touching but 
 lightly on the personal side of the narrative, 
 and giving to the incidents a picturesqueness 
 that charmed his guest. 
 
 Under the influence of food and friendliness 
 Miss Imboden s spirits revived as a drooping 
 plant straightens itself after a shower. She 
 sipped the glass of champagne he poured out 
 for her and resolutely kept in the background 
 the haunting spectre of to-morrow. It was 
 her duty to be cheerful and companionable. 
 The gas had been lit, and burned softly under 
 colored shades. Through the window she 
 7 1 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 could see the twinkling lights of Broadway. 
 She turned from them to meet his eyes fixed 
 upon her with a yet pleasanter twinkle. 
 They had been talking so freely and light- 
 heartedly that both had temporarily forgotten 
 the strangeness of their position. It came to 
 them after this little lull and there was a 
 moment of embarrassment. He recovered 
 himself first, and, over the ices, gave her a 
 quiet imitation of an English celebrity which 
 delighted her by its fidelity to life. But as 
 she looked and listened the woman s mind 
 was busy. She must get away from him 
 now how, she did not know, but somehow, 
 and almost at once. The coffee had been 
 ordered. She drank it, declining the liqueur 
 which came with it, and as he sipped his and 
 chatted on, her plan of action outlined itself 
 in her mind. 
 
 If only she had met him in any other way 
 she would have been glad to know him bet 
 ter. But she was resolved not to continue 
 an acquaintance whose warrant had lapsed. 
 He had been charming. He had given her 
 a most excellent dinner, and his manner 
 had been that of a gentleman and a friend. 
 72 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 Thanks to her, his enjoyment had been com 
 plete. It was time that the incident should 
 end. She had had appetite and no dinner. 
 He had dinner but no appetite. Each had 
 supplied the other s lack. They were quits. 
 
 "What shall we do next?" he asked 
 cheerfully, as he took the check from the 
 waiter. " It s too warm for the theatre, 
 is n t it ? And there s nothing on that s 
 really good. Why not take a pleasant drive 
 through Central Park and around Claremont ? 
 It s only eight. We can be back by ten, if 
 you wish." 
 
 The proposition fitted in with her plan, 
 and she acquiesced. 
 
 " I will order the carriage," he said, " and 
 have it at the ladies entrance. Perhaps 
 you d better wait in the little reception-room 
 at the left." He led her there as he spoke 
 and saw her comfortably seated. 
 
 u I will not keep you waiting more than 
 five minutes," he promised, glancing down at 
 her protectingly. 
 
 She watched his erect figure go through 
 the door and down the hall. The instant he 
 was out of sight she sprang to her feet, and 
 73 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 the next moment the pedestrians on Eleventh 
 Street were confronted by the spectacle of a 
 young lady, perfectly dressed, running like a 
 deer along that quiet thoroughfare through 
 the gathering darkness. She did not stop 
 until she reached Washington Square. There 
 she dropped exhausted on a small bench and 
 panted as she sat looking up at the cross 
 blazing on the lofty tower of the church in 
 front of her. 
 
 It was fate, and a happy one for Miss 
 Imboden, that sent Ruth Herrick swinging 
 rapidly across the Square on her way home 
 from " The Searchlight " office. Her quick 
 eye saw the lonely figure and read the de 
 pression in its relaxed lines. She looked 
 sharply at the averted face, and recognized 
 Miss Imboden, whom she knew slightly. 
 
 " Why, Miss Imboden ! " she exclaimed, 
 stopping suddenly before the drooping form. 
 " How do you do ? I m so glad to see 
 you." 
 
 The cheery voice and the expression of 
 
 sympathy in Miss Herrick s gray eyes broke 
 
 the barriers of the other woman s reserve. 
 
 She sobbed almost hysterically as she caught 
 
 74 
 
At the Close of the Second Day 
 
 Miss Herrick s hands in hers as confidingly as 
 a child reaches out to its mother in the dark. 
 
 u I ve had so much trouble," she said. " I 
 would have come to you, but I heard that 
 you were away on your vacation." 
 
 " I got back last night," explained " The 
 Searchlight s" leading woman. "They sent 
 for me. I had a great deal of work piled up 
 awaiting me, and stayed late to do it. I 
 thought a good tramp would put me in trim 
 again after ten hours at my desk, so I walked 
 up from The Searchlight office. Was n t 
 it lucky ? We 11 take the elevated train at 
 Eighth Street and you shall tell me all about 
 it on our way home." 
 
 The story was begun in the train and com 
 pleted in Miss Herrick s apartment at the 
 Hotel Edward. Miss Imboden was tucked 
 cosily into a big chair near a window over 
 looking the ivy-covered Moorish court of the 
 hotel ; under her tired feet was a hassock, in 
 her hand was a big palm-leaf fan, and before 
 her sat Ruth Herrick, all interest and atten 
 tion. 
 
 u Now I 11 tell you what you re going to 
 do," said that resolute young person when the 
 75 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tale was ended. "You re to stay here with 
 me until you get thoroughly settled. I think 
 our city editor will give you a place on The 
 Searchlight. He was asking to-day for 
 some one to do the news of the women s 
 clubs when the season opens. I 11 introduce 
 you to him to-morrow and tell him you re 
 exactly the woman for the place which is 
 no more than the truth. As to this experi 
 ence to-night, I 11 give you twenty dollars for 
 that. I can make a c special out of it." 
 
 u If you do," said Miss Imboden, with 
 childlike wistfulness, " I hope you will try to 
 make it appear that the man was acting ac 
 cording to his lights, and meant nothing but 
 kindness. He may have seen that I looked 
 hungry. At all events, if he learns that he 
 possibly saved me from the North River 
 is that the one they use ? he can t regret 
 having done it and won t feel as if I treated 
 him badly." 
 
 Miss Herrick laughed. 
 
 "Leave that to me, my dear," she an 
 swered reassuringly. " I will show him up 
 as the Good Samaritan of his own deed." 
 
 76 
 
THE WIFE OF THE 
 CANDIDATE 
 
 77 
 
THE WIFE OF THE CANDIDATE 
 
 THE little convent chapel was brilliant 
 with light and flooded with music. 
 
 D 
 
 On the great altar hundreds of wax candles 
 blazed, and on every side there were banks 
 of tall lilies whose perfume mingled with the 
 incense that added an oppressive element to 
 the heavy sweetness of the air. The mag 
 nificently solemn chords of the Stabat Mater 
 came from an organ hidden by a latticed 
 screen. 
 
 The Dominican priest had finished his re 
 marks, his voice softening and lingering over 
 the final words. His eyes, whose expression 
 had been calm almost to coldness, softened 
 also as he turned them upon the white-robed 
 figure at his feet. Their glance seemed to 
 convey the last warning of the confessor and 
 friend to this woman who was voluntarily 
 giving up the world for the cell of a cloistered 
 nun. He knew better than others what she 
 was renouncing. He also knew better the 
 79 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 battle she would have to wage before she 
 could find the peace she sought. A tender 
 sympathy for the woman so courageously 
 entering upon this warfare crept into the aus 
 tere calmness of the look he fixed upon her 
 as he ended the remarks which were a part 
 of the impressive ceremonies of her reception 
 in the great conventual order. 
 
 Ruth Herrick, sitting in a pew well toward 
 the front, saw the look and wondered. To 
 her the sacrifice seemed a worse than needless 
 one. Earlier in the afternoon, as she had 
 wandered through the old convent garden and 
 marked the contrast of its peace and quiet to 
 the city s roar, it had seemed to her that one 
 might rest here contentedly for a time. She 
 had felt almost in sympathy with the young 
 nun whose dramatic farewell to the world she 
 had come to see. Then she had gone into 
 the crowded chapel, and her mood had changed 
 as the ceremonies went on. They had 
 brought before her very vividly all that con 
 ventual life implied. 
 
 From the journalistic point of view she 
 rejoiced in their pathos and impressiveness, 
 which would lend color and interest to her 
 80 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 special story for the Sunday " Searchlight." 
 She mentally thanked anew the friend 
 who had secured her admission and who 
 was now crying softly at her side. Miss 
 Van Orden was subject to gusts of emotion 
 which she seemed to enjoy at the time and 
 which invariably left her much refreshed. 
 She was a close friend of the candidate for 
 the veil, and to-day s attack was therefore 
 justified. Miss Herrick, acutely conscious 
 of her own want of harmony with the gloom 
 about her, reminded herself that she was the 
 only person present who was a stranger to 
 the postulant, and also that she was there 
 solely in her reporter s capacity. She was 
 not, however, wholly unmoved by the spec 
 tacle. She had studied the calm and beautiful 
 face of the central figure in the drama, and 
 she felt that this well-poised woman of the 
 world had not turned her back on life with 
 out fully realizing the step she was taking. 
 She was giving up wealth and position and 
 friends. She was burying great beauty and 
 many gifts. She was resigning all possibility 
 of wifehood, motherhood, or any earthly love 
 for what ? Miss Herrick, with her strictly 
 6 81 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 practical views of life, could not answer the 
 question. She felt sure that the nun had 
 asked it of herself and had found the reply. 
 
 The reporter sank back in the pew and 
 let her eyes rest again on the slender figure 
 kneeling at the prie-dleu in front of the altar 
 railing. The nun s face was buried now in 
 her hands. The train of her white gown 
 swept around her, a billowy mass of silk and 
 lace that was reflected in the gleaming sur 
 face of the polished floor. Her long veil and 
 the orange-blossoms in her hair and on her 
 bosom looked oddly out of place, symbolic 
 though they were of her marriage to the 
 Church. She was the only postulant, but 
 the pomp of the function in her behalf was 
 as great as though many others were taking 
 the veil with her. Miss Herrick looked at 
 the white-robed priests before the altar, lis 
 tened to the melodious sighing of the organ 
 and the sobs of the women around her, and 
 felt dreamily that all this splendid ceremony 
 was but a proper recognition of the oblation 
 of one brilliant young life. How would it 
 seem that night, she wondered, when the 
 music had ceased and the lights had gone out 
 82 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 and the great convent lay dark and lonely 
 within its gray walls ? Would the nun, in 
 her stone cell, sleep in peace ? Or might 
 there not be, after the strain of the day and 
 its last farewells, some haunting fears and 
 doubts that raised their heads too late ? 
 
 The postulant had risen, and her friends 
 pressed forward. The last farewells were to 
 be spoken in a small room adjoining the 
 chapel. They were to be last farewells in 
 very truth. Never again would Dolores 
 Mendoza, now Sister Ethelbert, touch the 
 lips or the hands of a friend in greeting. 
 Once a year one might speak to her and get 
 a glimpse of her face through the convent 
 bars. But there could be no closer meeting. 
 
 They were weeping as they crowded 
 around her in the anteroom, and Ruth 
 Herrick, swept there by the energetic though 
 still subdued Miss Van Orden, felt strangely 
 out of place. She lingered in the background 
 near a little open window that looked into 
 the convent garden. The perfume of old- 
 fashioned flowers rilled the air, and she heard 
 the cheerful buzzing of the bees among them. 
 She tried to keep her professional eye not too 
 
 83 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 closely observant of the partings around her. 
 From time to time she heard the sound of 
 Sister Ethelbert s voice, and she noticed 
 that in all the leave-taking its rich contralto 
 tones were the only ones that were perfectly 
 steady. In the centre of the group of friends 
 the new Dominican Sister stood, a little pale 
 and with a patient sweetness in her brown 
 eyes, but carrying herself with a noble dignity 
 through the trying ordeal. They came to 
 her one by one, and she kissed each friend 
 twice, with a few murmured words that were 
 full of affection. Then they turned from 
 her sobbing and left the room. 
 
 " Are her relatives here ? " asked Miss 
 Herrick in a whisper, as the group grew 
 gradually smaller. " I don t see any one who 
 resembles her or who could be compared to 
 her, for that matter," she added. 
 
 " No," Miss Van Orden replied promptly, 
 "these are only friends. Her father and 
 mother are dead, and the only relative she has 
 lives somewhere out West, I believe. They 
 say they are not on good terms. Dolores 
 never spoke of any living relatives. She had 
 plenty of money and lived her own life abroad 
 84 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 and here in the East. She is twenty-seven 
 now and absolutely her own mistress. Come, 
 I want you to meet her." 
 
 Before the newspaper woman could demur 
 she found herself drawn by her friend toward 
 the nun. Nearly everybody had gone, and 
 the splendid figure in bridal attire was already 
 moving toward the door. Miss Van Orden, 
 spoiled and petted and a law unto herself, laid 
 a detaining hand lightly on her arm. 
 
 " Before you go," she said, " I want my 
 friend, Miss Herrick, to meet you. Miss 
 Herrick thinks that what you are doing is all 
 wrong, but she is full of admiration for the 
 way you are doing it." 
 
 The worldly speech and the little laugh 
 that accompanied it tempered the inopportune- 
 ness of the presentation. Sister Ethelbert s 
 lips parted in a quick smile. 
 
 " I regret there is not time," she said 
 brightly, "to convince Miss Herrick that 
 what I am doing is wholly right." The 
 serenity of the eyes, fixed on the reporter s 
 face with a sweet, unfaltering gaze, went far 
 toward confirming Miss Herrick in her 
 opinion that this woman had her own mind 
 
 85 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 very thoroughly convinced on the subject. 
 After a slight pause the nun added quietly : 
 
 cc You must not carry away a false impres 
 sion. Try to believe that there is happi 
 ness here for those who seek it in the right 
 spirit." 
 
 She had retained the girl s hand in her 
 own, and, as she finished speaking, on a 
 gracious impulse bent her head and lightly 
 kissed this stranger who doubted the wisdom 
 of her course, first on one cheek, then on 
 the other. 
 
 " Good-by," she said, with the same 
 sweet gravity. 
 
 The long train of heavy white silk swept 
 over the polished floor with a worldly rustle 
 as she walked away. A moment more, and 
 the last of the glistening fabric had vanished 
 through an open door, which closed upon the 
 stately figure. Sister Ethelbert had left the 
 world. 
 
 Ruth Herrick drew a long breath and 
 turned to Miss Van Orden. 
 
 " Do you realize," she asked, with brusque 
 earnestness, " that that woman gave the last 
 precious moments of her life in the world to 
 86 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 me ? I, a perfect stranger to her, had her 
 last words and her last kiss. It does n t seem 
 right. Why did you bring me forward ? " 
 
 Miss Van Orden laughed and drew her 
 young friend out into the quiet of the con 
 vent garden. She had recovered her equa 
 nimity and was prepared to look at all things 
 in a cheerful and philosophic light. 
 
 u My dear girl," she said lightly, " don t 
 be absurd. There is no one here who had a 
 better right to her last moment than you. Of 
 course we are all her friends, but we have only 
 the claim and affection of friends. Dolores 
 was one of the most brilliant and fascinating 
 women I ever met. You see, I already use 
 the past tense. She had insisted on burying 
 herself, and we have harrowed our souls by 
 attending her funeral. Everybody will now 
 go home and eat dinner with a wholly normal 
 appetite. It s the way of the world. One 
 can t afford to mourn even as much as one 
 ought to. I am going to get some of that 
 pink lemonade the lay sisters are offering 
 visitors in the reception-room, and bring it 
 here to drink in this hallowed spot. Don t 
 you want some ? " 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 "Thank you, yes," replied the younger 
 woman, settling herself comfortably in the 
 shadow of the fountain. The heat of the 
 day was over, and the twilight hour in 
 the scented garden was very grateful. 
 
 " I am sure there must be somebody," 
 she mused, " who really loves that woman, 
 and whose heart is the one that is pained 
 most by the ceremony to-day. That is the 
 person who ought to have had those very last 
 words and that last caress which were given 
 to me. But it was n t my fault." 
 
 More than a year later the country was 
 in the throes of a great political campaign. 
 It had been conclusively proven by the news 
 papers that the opponent of the candidate 
 whose cause they espoused was a man abso 
 lutely unfit, mentally and morally, for the 
 high place he sought, and whose administra 
 tion, were he elected, would stand forever as 
 a black page in the nation s history. Local 
 news was cut to pieces or pushed wholly 
 aside to make room for the national questions 
 of the day and their countless ramifications. 
 On several occasions during the great strug- 
 88 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 gle, Fame, passing by many who had worked 
 and waited for its coming, paused beside some 
 unknown, and, bringing him forward, gave 
 him a place on the platform toward which 
 the eyes of the country were turned. 
 
 When Fame laid such hands on the Hon 
 orable Robert Eddington and thrust him before 
 the public s gaze, the Honorable Robert s 
 wife was probably the one person in the land 
 not acutely surprised. Mrs. Eddington ad 
 mired her husband very much, and had long 
 felt that the country would some day need 
 his services. When the summons came she 
 was therefore not wholly unprepared, and she 
 was able to support her husband through the 
 first painless shock of the experience. That 
 was the beginning and the end of Mrs. Edding- 
 ton s work in the campaign. She was but little 
 more than twenty-eight, beautiful, and socially 
 popular. She knew nothing about politics, 
 and, beyond a serene confidence in her hus 
 band s election to the high office for which he 
 had been nominated, cared nothing about it. 
 She therefore permitted the Honorable Robert 
 to manage his own campaign with the kind 
 assistance of his friends. If she occasionally 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 accompanied him on electioneering tours it 
 was only to be with him ; she preferred the 
 quiet of her elegant home and the society of 
 her little boy. She was enjoying both one 
 October evening when Miss Herrick, who 
 had been sent West by " The Searchlight " 
 to write campaign specials, called to interview 
 her on the position of American women in 
 politics. 
 
 Mrs. Eddington knew nothing about the 
 position of American women in politics, and 
 frankly said so to the young reporter whom 
 she received very graciously, coming as she 
 did with a letter of introduction from a friend. 
 The wife of the candidate placidly avowed 
 that she held old-fashioned views on the 
 woman question. She afforded the journalist, 
 however, a very good two-column interview 
 on " Woman in the Home," which made the 
 copy-reader sniff contemptuously, and brought 
 a flood of commendatory letters to the editor 
 from the " Constant Readers " of the paper. 
 
 As Mrs. Eddington talked, Miss Herrick 
 studied her face, and was impressed by its 
 striking resemblance to one she had seen be 
 fore. Those brown eyes with the peculiar 
 90 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 glint in them when the woman laughed, the 
 fashion in which the long lashes curled down 
 on the cheek, the beautiful contour of the 
 face, the waves of black hair coiled low on 
 the neck, the turn of the head, a certain trick 
 of speech, the very intonations of the voice 
 
 where had she met them all ? 
 
 " You must not carry away a false impres 
 sion," said her hostess, as the interview drew 
 to a close, and her listener had the odd sensa 
 tion of having heard her say this some time 
 in the past. Mrs. Eddington, seeing the 
 reporter s puzzled expression, smiled and 
 suddenly the rich tones of the library, lit up 
 by the cheerful glow from the open grate, 
 faded away, and a cold, bare room opening off 
 a convent garden took its place. The white- 
 robed figure standing there had said the same 
 words with the same voice, the same gesture, 
 
 yes, the same smile. Miss Herrick re 
 membered. 
 
 It was with a new thrill of interest that she 
 looked again at the face before her. How 
 vivid the resemblance was ! But the interview 
 was over and she closed her notebook. Her 
 hostess, leaning back in her chair, was regard- 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 ing her intently. Outside, a band played 
 national airs as a delicate compliment to the 
 candidate, who had just returned from a trip 
 through the State, and there were already 
 growing shouts for a speech from the en 
 thusiastic townsmen who had assembled to 
 welcome him home. 
 
 " If you don t mind," said Mrs. Eddington, 
 with a slight foreign shrug, " I should like to 
 know if there is any special reason for your 
 looking at me so intently." 
 
 " Was I staring ? I I beg your par 
 don," stammered the newspaper woman. u I 
 could n t help it. From the moment I saw 
 you I ve been trying to recall where I could 
 have seen a face like yours before, and it has 
 just come to me. The resemblance is most 
 extraordinary." 
 
 "Really," murmured the other woman, 
 with wonder. She had bent down as if to 
 speak to her little son, who stood at her knee, 
 but there was a sudden flash of interest in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes," said Miss Herrick, thoughtfully, 
 her eyes still fastened on the other. " It was 
 a nun the central figure of the most dra- 
 92 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 matic ceremony I ever witnessed. I saw her 
 take the veil and enter a community of the 
 most severely cloistered Dominican nuns a 
 year ago. But I beg your pardon. I must 
 not detain you any longer." She had risen 
 and extended her hand in farewell, but her 
 hostess, instead of taking it, motioned to her 
 to resume her seat. 
 
 cc Don t go, please, until you have told me 
 all about that nun," she said hastily, and 
 with a strained note in her voice which the 
 ear of the reporter instantly detected. "I 
 I should like to hear it. It must have been 
 very interesting." She lifted her boy into 
 her lap as she spoke, and the dancing flames 
 of the open fire on the hearth touched his 
 yellow head with brighter tints of gold. Out 
 side the band was playing still, its softer 
 tones almost drowned by the voices of the 
 crowd. 
 
 " You re quite sure it won t bore you ? " 
 asked the newspaper woman, sinking into her 
 seat again. An idea had flashed into her 
 mind and she felt her way cautiously. 
 
 " Quite," echoed her hostess. " Please tell 
 me all about it. There must be something of 
 93 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 more than usual interest in the character of a 
 woman who gives up everything for a con 
 ventual life." She had regained her self-con 
 trol and her voice and glance were steady, if 
 hurried. 
 
 " She was one of the most beautiful women 
 I ever saw," began Miss Herrick, quietly, 
 " and I have been told she was brilliant and 
 charming as well. I had never met her be 
 fore, and I had only a moment with her then 
 as she was saying a last good-by to her friends. 
 She was so calm and strong through the whole 
 dreadful ordeal that my heart went out to her. 
 It is horrible to see such a woman burying 
 herself alive. She could have done so much in 
 the world if she had been content to remain 
 there. But somehow I fancied that she had 
 been unhappy. She seemed to have no rela 
 tives, and though a great many of her friends 
 were there and they wept a good deal, they 
 were all cheerful enough when it was 
 over." 
 
 Miss Herrick paused, but there was no 
 
 comment from her hostess. The room was 
 
 growing dark. The firelight, falling on the 
 
 two figures in the big chair, showed the 
 
 94 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 mother s face buried in her little boy s soft 
 curls. 
 
 "The friend who had taken me there," 
 resumed the newspaper woman, " swept me 
 into the room in which the farewells were 
 going on ; and when they were over and 
 almost everybody was gone, she introduced 
 me to the nun. We talked for a moment, and 
 then to my surprise she kissed me good-by as 
 she had kissed the others. She left the room 
 immediately, and so it happened that I had 
 her very last moment in the world and her last 
 caress. I told Miss Van Orden afterward 
 that it did n t seem right for a stranger to get 
 such a precious thing when it belonged by 
 every right to somebody who really loved her. 
 Miss Van Orden laughed and seemed to think 
 there was no one who would have appreci 
 ated it any more than I did." 
 
 A queer little quavering sound came from 
 the big chair. Miss Herrick glanced at the 
 woman there, and then turned her eyes 
 toward the fire. The suspicion in her mind 
 had become a certainty. 
 
 "There is not much more to tell," she 
 said, " except that later we were permitted to 
 95 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 look at her through the convent bars. She 
 had changed her wedding-gown and orange- 
 blossoms for the white serge habit of the 
 Dominican Order. On her head she wore 
 a long veil, and on that was pressed a crown 
 of thorns. There were two gratings three or 
 four feet apart and she was beyond the inner 
 one. We could not so much as touch her 
 finger. No friend ever can again, according 
 to the rules of that particular branch of the 
 Order. She was pale, almost ghastly, after 
 the strain of the day, and her dark eyes looked 
 very tired but she was her royal self to the 
 last." 
 
 " Her royal self. That is it. She was 
 always that my Dolores." 
 
 Low as the words were, Miss Herrick 
 caught them and looked up. Mrs. Edding- 
 ton was leaning forward, forgetful of her 
 sleeping son, staring at the fire with unseeing 
 eyes. Its light brought out in full relief her 
 wet cheeks and the strong emotion in her 
 face. The reporter rose quietly and took the 
 sleeping child from his mother s lap. She 
 rang the bell and gave him to the nurse who 
 responded. Then she went back to her seat. 
 96 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 Mrs. Eddington, looking up for the first time, 
 met the other s dark gray eyes. The deep 
 and quiet sympathy of their glance dispelled 
 any lingering reluctance to laying bare her 
 heart. 
 
 "We are sisters twin sisters," she said, 
 speaking rapidly and with an evident effort. 
 " We adored each other, but we quarrelled. 
 There is the whole story. We were both 
 proud, and each refused to make the first 
 advances, though both our hearts ached, I am 
 sure. Think of it ! We were all alone in 
 the world, and yet we drifted apart. She 
 went abroad and studied ; I remained in this 
 country and married. At long intervals I 
 heard of her as she must have heard of me, 
 but our paths did not cross. Our friends, 
 our tastes, our environments, were all so dif 
 ferent. The only thing we had in common 
 was the memory of our dead parents and the 
 affection for each other that still lived through 
 all the pride and anger which tried to stifle it. 
 If I had ever heard that she was unhappy or 
 in trouble I would have written her at once, 
 but the few reports that came to me repre 
 sented her as living a full, rounded, brilliant, 
 7 97 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 happy life. There has not been a day in 
 which the thought of her has not been with 
 me, an undercurrent in everything I did or 
 said. When I have seen little children 
 together I have thought of the days when 
 Dolores and I played in childish love and 
 happiness, and of the nights when one of us 
 would creep out of her own little bed to go 
 and sleep in the other s arms." 
 
 She stopped for a moment. 
 
 " Can you understand it ? " she went on. 
 " I cannot. It is one of those incredible 
 things that happen in real life. A year ago, 
 after I had lost trace of her for a long time, 
 she wrote me. It was the first time since we 
 were parted. The letter was dated from the 
 convent. She had been staying there, it 
 seems. She told me that she had decided to 
 take the veil and that there was no longer 
 any bitterness in her heart toward me ; noth 
 ing but love. I wrote at once, imploring her 
 to reconsider her decision and to come to me. 
 I begged and entreated and humbled myself 
 in the dust to no effect. There was no 
 reply. I feel now that they may not have 
 allowed her to write and perhaps she did 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 not even receive my letter. But I was cut 
 to the very heart by what I thought her cruel 
 indifference at the time and I, too, tried to 
 forget. I have heard nothing of her since 
 until to-day. You have brought me the end 
 of the story. She is dead to me now in 
 deed, and I have never realized until this 
 moment how strong my hope has been that 
 we should some day come together again 
 my sister Dolores and I." 
 
 Her face was buried in her hands as the 
 nun Ethelbert s had been in the convent 
 chapel. Tears trickled through her ringers, 
 and lent a heartless brilliance to the rings 
 that sparkled upon them. 
 
 There was a wild cheer from the street. 
 The candidate had appeared in the balcony 
 below, and now, in the silence that followed 
 his greeting, he began to make a speech. A 
 few of the sonorous, grandiloquent periods 
 floated through the half-opened window. 
 Mrs. Eddington did not hear them. The 
 wife of the candidate was never less interested 
 in politics than at that moment. 
 
 u If I could only feel that she is happy," 
 she cried ; " but I cannot think she is. Our 
 99 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 natures were too much alike. Why should 
 I have all and she nothing ? Think of it 
 husband, child, home, love, all mine. And 
 what has she ? " 
 
 " She told me she knew that she was do 
 ing right," Miss Herrick said with quiet 
 force, "and she said there was peace and 
 happiness in the convent for one who sought 
 it in the right spirit. And, pardon me, Mrs. 
 Eddington, but let me say one thing before 
 I go." She had risen again and was looking 
 at the other woman with a very genuine and 
 gentle sympathy. Mrs. Eddington rose too, 
 regaining her self-control with a thorough 
 ness which made Miss Herrick once more 
 recall that other who had renounced hus 
 band, children, home, and human love. 
 
 " I am sadly conscious that it is not in my 
 power to say anything that can fully cheer 
 or comfort you," Miss Herrick said slowly. 
 " But it seems to me that you and your sister 
 are nearer to-day than you have been since 
 your estrangement. There is no bitterness 
 between you. She has told you so and you 
 feel none. Each of you knows that there 
 is a sister s love in the other s heart. You 
 100 
 
The Wife of the Candidate 
 
 understand each other at last. You can write 
 to her, or you can even see her and tell her 
 so. And do you not see that there might 
 never have been this reconciliation if she had 
 remained in this great, busy world ? " 
 
 She put out her hands. Mrs. Eddington 
 grasped them and held them tightly pressed 
 in her own. Their position recalled to her 
 vividly a tender memory which swept away 
 her self-control. She leaned forward, and, 
 with quivering lips, kissed the newspaper 
 woman on each cheek. 
 
 " I am sure," she said brokenly, " that 
 Dolores kissed you good-by in that way, in 
 our Spanish fashion. You do not mind if 
 I seem to take that last caress of hers in this 
 way, do you? You know you felt it be 
 longed to me." 
 
 101 
 
MRS. OGILVIE S 
 LOCAL COLOR 
 
 103 
 
MRS. OGILVIE S LOCAL COLOR. 
 
 " HT^HE trouble with my writing," said 
 JL Mrs. Ogilvie, pensively, " is that it 
 lacks local color." 
 
 She was leaning on Miss Herrick s desk 
 in the city room, reading with much self- 
 control a story of her own which had ap 
 peared in u The Searchlight " that morning. 
 Not more than half of it had survived the 
 ruthless blue pencil of Hunt, the copy-reader, 
 whose muttered words as he had toiled over it 
 the night before had not been prayers. In 
 the interval between the rewriting of the last 
 paragraph and the "building " of the " head " 
 for the article, that gentleman had refreshed 
 himself by confiding to a fellow-sufferer at 
 the next desk a frank opinion of Mrs. 
 Ogilvie s work which would have been of 
 the greatest value to her if she had over 
 heard it. 
 
 "All I have to do with it," he ended 
 grimly as he lit a cigarette, " is to cut out 
 105 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 eighteen pages from the beginning, twenty- 
 two pages from the end, and rewrite the 
 middle. If only she d begin and end her 
 stories in the middle it would be the salva 
 tion of us both ! " 
 
 Unfortunately this admirable suggestion 
 never reached the ears of the woman reporter 
 who read her mutilated article the next morn 
 ing and deplored, as usual, the lack of that 
 local color which she was certain would have 
 won the copy-reader s admiration and stopped 
 his blue pencil in its impetuous descent. She 
 propped her soft chin in the palms of her 
 incompetent little hands and looked down at 
 Miss Herrick rather doubtfully as she resumed 
 her confidences. 
 
 u I sometimes think," she said wistfully, 
 " that it s because I have n t had experience 
 enough I mean, I haven t lived enough 
 and seen enough. The other newspaper 
 women I know seem to have such dramatic 
 lives. Interesting things are always happen 
 ing to them. Nothing ever happens to me. 
 I get little, unimportant assignments that 
 don t count, though they make me work 
 hard enough and when I have finished I 
 1 06 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 go home to John. We re so far up in 
 Harlem that it does n t seem worth while to 
 come downtown in the evening to the theatre 
 or anything of that kind, and so we stay at 
 home and I suppose we stagnate. My 
 husband, you know, is not strong, and I have 
 to be very careful of him. I don t regret 
 our quiet life we re very happy. But I 
 sometimes think I should go about more and 
 broaden and develop my mind, for the sake 
 of my work." 
 
 Her voice lingered fondly on the last two 
 words. She was plainly fascinated by her 
 brief newspaper experience, and Miss Herrick 
 saw and marvelled over this, just as she had 
 marvelled six months before when the ill- 
 prepared novice had taken her first plunge 
 into the journalistic whirlpool. Never had 
 such a gay, inexperienced, unsophisticated 
 little woman come into the office. Bets were 
 freely offered that she would leave before the 
 end of the week an impression which the 
 city editor fully shared until Thursday morn 
 ing, when she had brought him a news u tip " 
 that made him take his feet off his desk and 
 show other signs of joyful professional interest. 
 107 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 As the months passed, she had quietly taken 
 her place as one of the most indefatigable 
 workers on the staff, alert, enthusiastic, and 
 absolutely reliable. In the working up of a 
 story she knew no such word as fail. She 
 invariably secured her facts and, having 
 them, she set them forth in a fine, large hand 
 and schoolgirl style which drew groans of 
 anguish from her newspaper associates. There 
 was not a touch of heart or sympathy in her 
 work. As Herforth put it, "She handled 
 the most tragic themes in a manner that was 
 positively gay." 
 
 " She s a charming little woman," added 
 Herforth, who was the " star " reporter and 
 inclined to the analytic, " but, hang it all, I 
 don t believe she has any soul. Nobody 
 could have and write the stuff she turns 
 out. If something would happen to shake 
 her up a bit and knock into her some 
 sense of what life is, I believe she d develop 
 wonderfully." 
 
 The others lounging around the city room 
 
 laughed at his vehemence. They shared his 
 
 liking for the " little woman," especially 
 
 since they had learned of the invalid husband 
 
 108 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 and of the quiet devotion with which she bore 
 her share of the struggle for a livelihood. 
 
 " Look at her now," continued Herforth, 
 his eyes resting on the slight figure by Miss 
 Herrick s side. " Marbury has given her a 
 Sunday special to do that case of the old 
 woman whose husband has just died and 
 who s going to the almshouse Friday. It 
 ought to be a great story but she 11 spoil it. 
 It won t be half so melancholy as our own 
 comic supplement," he ended gloomily. 
 
 The unconscious object of his criticism 
 was listening with much deference to some 
 quiet suggestions by Miss Herrick as to the 
 special story he had mentioned. " Try to 
 put yourself in the old woman s place," the 
 experienced newspaper woman ended. " Try 
 to realize what it must be to her to face the 
 world alone at eighty-five, with husband, 
 home, children, friends all gone. Put some 
 feeling into your work, my dear. Don t worry 
 about the local color. 
 
 Mrs. Ogilvie took these final words out of 
 the office with her and thought them over as 
 she rode uptown in the Broadway car. 
 
 " It is n t that I lack sympathy," she mused, 
 109 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 "but somehow I can t express it. Perhaps 
 the world is n t really as bright and beautiful 
 as it seems to me, but I don t see why 
 I should go out of my way to discover 
 that. The popular idea of experience in 
 the office is evidently to be broken on a 
 wheel a few times. I don t believe my lit 
 erary style would be improved by that. Be 
 sides, I m horribly afraid of being sentimental 
 or mawkish." 
 
 As the car was rounding "Dead Man s 
 Curve," she heard the clang of an ambulance 
 bell and saw a crowd gather thickly in front 
 of one of the buildings in Fourteenth Street. 
 Two large policemen were trying to make 
 way for several white-faced men who were 
 carrying a limp figure into an adjacent hall 
 way. As the ambulance rattled up to the 
 curb and the crowd parted, she saw the great 
 safe which had crashed to the ground and the 
 parted cable that told the story of the accident. 
 She felt a pang of sympathy for the uncon 
 scious victim, followed by a sudden faintness 
 as she realized what the tragedy might mean 
 in some New York home. u Fancy what I 
 should suffer if it were John," she breathed, 
 no 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 This hypothetic plunge into such an abyss 
 of despair made her soul shudder. 
 
 She was very busy all day. She had several 
 assignments, one of which necessitated the 
 interviewing of a great many persons. It was 
 after seven in the evening when she returned 
 to " The Searchlight " building and entered 
 the city room. A hush seemed to fall on it as 
 the little gray figure walked briskly toward the 
 city editor s desk. It was Ruth Herrick, sick 
 at heart over the task she had to perform, who 
 intercepted her, and putting her arm around 
 the other woman s shoulder, drew her into an 
 adjoining room, beyond the gaze even of the 
 sympathetic eyes that followed them. 
 
 " I have something to tell you, my dear 
 girl my dear girl," she began falteringly. 
 She could not bear to meet the big blue eyes 
 that were fastened on her face with a look of 
 almost childish terror. " I have bad news 
 for you you must try to bear it as bravely 
 as you can," she went on. " Your husband 
 has been injured, and you must go to him at 
 once. I will go with you. I have sent for 
 a cab, and as we ride uptown I 11 tell you 
 everything. We ve been trying to reach 
 in 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 you all day long, but you have been going so 
 constantly that we could not find you." 
 
 In after years Mrs. Ogilvie recalled every 
 small detail of the ride on that cold December 
 evening. It was snowing slightly, and the 
 buildings they passed looked strangely unfa 
 miliar through the white mist. The street 
 sounds and the cries of the newsboys seemed 
 to come to her ears from a great distance. 
 She was dimly conscious of Miss Herrick s 
 words. As one in a dream she listened 
 to the story of the falling of the safe, the 
 injury of her husband, and his removal to 
 the hospital. The knowledge that she had 
 ridden past his unconscious form, leaving 
 him to be cared for by strangers, pierced 
 her numbed consciousness like a knife. 
 The horror of it shocked her into speech 
 at last. 
 
 u Is he dead ? " she asked, and then, as 
 Miss Herrick tried to answer, the strained 
 voice said from the darkness, " Never mind, 
 I understand," and the two women rode on 
 in silence. 
 
 There was nothing to do when they reached 
 the hospital except to give instructions as to 
 
 112 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 the disposition of what had been John Ogilvie, 
 and this was done by two " Searchlight " men 
 who had followed the newspaper women 
 uptown. In their quiet, capable way, they 
 assumed control of the practical end of the 
 situation, while the doctors and the trained 
 nurse who had been with the patient talked 
 with the widow in the little reception-room. 
 
 Miss Herrick remained in the Harlem 
 apartment that night and listened to the 
 steady tramp of her neighbor s feet in the 
 next room. Up and down, all night long, 
 they made their weary journey. There was 
 nothing to be done. The u little woman " 
 was meeting and bearing her trouble in her 
 own way, and she had temporarily entrenched 
 herself behind a barrier which even the most 
 sympathetic dared not try to break down. 
 Three days later, she laid her dead away in 
 the little churchyard of the quiet town where 
 she and John had met and loved and married. 
 And her associates, from u The Searchlight " 
 office, who had gone there for the funeral, 
 looked at the black-robed figure across the 
 church and wondered if this dry-eyed woman 
 with the stricken face were really the little 
 8 113 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 birdlike creature who had fluttered about the 
 office, the despair of the copy-readers and the 
 subject of Herforth s prayers. They left her 
 there, at her request, and a few loiterers, 
 lingering long after the others, saw her cross 
 ing the churchyard through the falling dark 
 ness, with the old sexton by her side, their 
 footsteps crackling on the crisp snow. He 
 had carried her as a little girl, on his shoulder 
 and he obeyed her unquestioningly now. 
 He opened the door of the vault in which her 
 husband had been temporarily placed, and left 
 her there alone. When he returned, an hour 
 later, she was still there a crushed, desolate 
 figure with its head upon its knees. It was 
 very dark in the vault, but through the open 
 door one could see the heartless sparkle of 
 the cold stars. She rose to her feet as he 
 entered and grasped him by the arm. 
 
 " I must see him once more," she cried. 
 " I will see him just once more and then I 11 
 go away. I promise you. Only bring a 
 light and let me see him as I say good-by." 
 
 The old man obeyed her dumbly. Grop 
 ing in his pockets he found a match and held 
 it up to her. " It s the only one," he said. 
 114 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 " If I light it will you come away with me 
 as soon as it goes out ? " 
 
 " I promise," she said dully. He lit the 
 match, and its yellow light flared up, illumi 
 nating the gray walls of the vault and its 
 contents. She threw her arms over the 
 casket in which her husband s body lay, and 
 pressed her face against the glass that divided 
 them, her eyes strained widely in this last 
 look. The sleeping face beneath the glass 
 looked very calm and peaceful. She saw it 
 fall into shadow as the match burned down 
 and left them in the gloom. 
 
 She groped her way out into the brilliant 
 night, the old man tottering by her side. He 
 did not speak to her, but he went with her 
 through the cemetery and to the village streets, 
 along which belated citizens were hurrying. 
 The little shops they passed were ablaze with 
 lights, and through the drawn shades of some 
 of the houses she could see the bright warm 
 rooms, happy children, and holiday decora 
 tions and trees. In the streets were the 
 jingle of sleigh-bells and the sound of merry 
 voices raised in Christmas greeting. 
 
 The old sexton took her to the hotel where 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 she was staying and left her at the door of 
 her room. He was glad to see that there 
 was a bright fire burning in it, and that the 
 lamps were lit and the atmosphere was warm 
 and cosey. He did not know that after he 
 had gone she turned out the lights and knelt 
 down by the window with her forehead 
 against the cool pane, her eyes seeing only 
 the gleam of eloquent tombstones standing 
 thickly in the Christmas snow of the cem 
 etery where John and her heart were buried. 
 It would not have especially interested him 
 if he had known. Unlike Mrs. Ogilvie, the 
 sexton was used to grief. 
 
 The city editor had received a little note 
 from Mrs. Ogilvie, begging him to let her 
 work on without interruption, " for work," 
 she ended, " will be my only refuge now." 
 He had sent her several assignments with 
 journalistic promptness, and with a letter full 
 of almost human sympathy. He thought of 
 her suddenly one evening as he looked at the 
 head of her arch-enemy, Hunt, the copy- 
 reader, bent over a story of hers which he 
 had given him to rewrite. u We want good 
 116 
 
Mrs. Ogilvie s Local Color 
 
 stuff out of this," he had said, without glanc 
 ing it over; "whip it into shape, old man, 
 and make the very best of it. There should 
 be a lot of human interest and pathos in it." 
 
 He noticed that Hunt had dropped his blue 
 pencil and was leaning back in his chair read 
 ing the copy with a peculiar expression on his 
 tired young face. He glanced up at the 
 city editor as the latter stopped by his desk, 
 and said slowly : 
 
 " Rewrite this story ? I guess not. It s 
 one of the best things I Ve ever handled. 
 It s got all the local color there is. It s got 
 a tear in every line of it and, by Jove, it s 
 written by Mrs. Ogilvie ! " 
 
 "What did I tell you?" said Herforth, 
 who had come up and was listening to the 
 conversation. He took several pages of the 
 copy from Hunt s unresisting hand, and 
 glanced over them, his lips puckering for a 
 whistle as he read. His comment, as he 
 handed them back, defined the situation tersely, 
 and in a way established Mrs. Ogilvie s status 
 in the office. 
 
 " That is n t local color," he said firmly ; 
 "that s soul!" 
 
 117 
 
FROM THE HAND 
 OF DOLORITA 
 
FROM THE HAND OF DOLORITA. 
 
 THE little cabin lay in a hollow of the 
 uplands, picturesquely covered with 
 vines, whose autumn-tinted leaves waved 
 coquettishly in the light breeze. Overhang 
 ing it protectingly loomed the Virginia moun 
 tains, their sombre tops lost in the mists of 
 gathering darkness. A gleam of firelight fell 
 across the threshold, cheering Ruth Herrick 
 with its suggestion of warmth and homeliness 
 as she reined in her horse before the open 
 door. Within, she could see dimly, among 
 the smoke from several pipes, the sprawl 
 ing figures of mountaineers, who looked up, 
 at her approach, with the dumb indifference 
 of their kind. She remained mounted until 
 some one should come to accord her the 
 hospitality she knew would not be lacking, 
 while her guide kept a little in the back 
 ground, equally confident that the trying 
 journey of the day was over. 
 
 Miss Herrick stated her errand briefly to 
 the tired-eyed mountain woman whom the 
 
 121 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 sound of her horse s hoofs had brought from 
 the cabin. She was a newspaper reporter 
 from New York, she said, making a trip 
 among the Virginia and Tennessee mountains 
 in search of " special stories " for the Sunday 
 Edition of "The Searchlight." She had 
 travelled far that day and was tired. Would 
 they take her in for the night ? She asked 
 the question with the smile which had won 
 many concessions in her journalistic career. 
 It did not fail her now. The woman stepped 
 aside with a slight reflection of it on her own 
 worn face. 
 
 " Ef you uns low yuh kin git along th 
 whut we Ve got," she said, with an accent 
 of lowly mistrust, motioning toward the 
 smoke-filled interior where there was now 
 some stir among the men. 
 
 Miss Herrick followed her cheerfully into 
 the uninviting atmosphere. There was but 
 one room visible, though a ladder, leaning 
 against the wall, suggested another retreat 
 above. In the immense fireplace on one 
 side of the cabin great logs were blazing, 
 and within the circle of light and warmth 
 from these, the mountain family had gathered. 
 122 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 Miss Herrick s quick eyes swept over the 
 group as she joined it. She recognized im 
 mediately the head of the house, gray-bearded 
 and venerable, with a certain dignity of man 
 ner that surprised her until she learned that 
 he was the pastor and beloved leader of the 
 mountaineers of four counties. His daughter 
 and two sons lounged near him, one of the 
 latter working with intermittent energy on 
 the construction of a primitive wooden chair. 
 The rude tools with which he toiled were 
 scattered over the floor among bits of wood 
 and shavings. The daughter, after a silent 
 but comprehensive inspection of the visitor 
 and her attire, rose stolidly to assist her 
 mother in the preparation of the evening 
 meal. 
 
 With a little sigh of weariness, the guest 
 sank into the chair which the old man indi 
 cated for her in the glow of the firelight. 
 
 " You are very kind," she said gratefully. 
 " The nearest settlement, the guide tells me, 
 is twenty-eight miles away, and the roads are 
 very bad. I don t know what I should have 
 done if you had not taken me in." 
 
 "We re right glad t see yuh," the old 
 123 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 man assured her, simply. " You uns hes 
 hed a right sma t trip f you come f m Big 
 Stone Gap t -day. Reckon these cabins don t 
 seem much like N York t yuh." 
 
 " Everything in this part of the country is 
 new to me," said Miss Herrick. " I have 
 never been in the Southern mountains before. 
 I find them very interesting." 
 
 The younger son, who had not changed 
 his restful position on the floor, now sat up 
 with some determination. Miss Herrick saw 
 a fair head turn toward her, an alert interest 
 in its poise. 
 
 " Did you uns low ye come f m 
 N York ? " asked a startled voice from the 
 darkness. The reporter smiled at the artless 
 eagerness in the tone, and looked closely at 
 the speaker. In the flickering light from the 
 blazing logs his face had a beauty that startled 
 her. She had not expected to find a moun 
 tain Apollo hidden in these hills, but here he 
 was, a superbly built young giant with a face 
 of almost Hellenic type. His fair hair waved 
 softly around the finely shaped head, and the 
 dark blue eyes that looked at her through 
 long and curling lashes had the appealing 
 124 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 trustfulness of a child s. At his question the 
 industrious young carpenter on the floor 
 laughed jeeringly. 
 
 " Joe s beginnin tuh take notice," he 
 said, glancing at the visitor with deep mean 
 ing. Unlike his brother, he was not hand 
 some ; but strength and character showed in 
 his face, tanned and burned by the mountain 
 winds. 
 
 "Joe lows he s got a sweethea t in 
 N York," he drawled teasingly. 
 
 The young Apollo s face flushed richly. 
 He twisted round on his elbow, and, turning 
 his back on the group with an elaborate air 
 of indifference, fixed his eyes once more on 
 the burning logs. His brother opened his 
 lips to speak again, but was silenced by an 
 expressive glance from the head of the 
 family. 
 
 Miss Herrick told them that she had lived 
 in New York for eight years, although her 
 home, too, was in the South. She answered 
 their simple and numerous questions over the 
 evening meal, served primitively on a bare 
 pine table, and discussed facts that seemed 
 like fairy-tales to these simple mountaineers, 
 I2 5 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 to whom New York was but a name. She 
 in her turn had some surprises. She learned 
 that none of the family had been more than 
 twenty miles from home, that none had ever 
 seen a railroad train or a newspaper. They 
 had heard these wonders discussed in the 
 mountains where, from time to time, some 
 echo of the outside world penetrated, but 
 their conceptions of such marvels were 
 strangely vague. 
 
 u joe," the younger son, said little, but 
 throughout the evening Miss Herrick was 
 conscious of the fixed regard of his guileless 
 eyes. She became strangely interested in 
 the young mountaineer, as evidently clean of 
 mind and heart as he was unconscious of his 
 striking beauty. There was a wistfulness in 
 his look which she interpreted rightly. He 
 wished to speak to her to ask her some 
 thing and dared not. Once she followed 
 the direction of his glance, and saw on the 
 brown wall of the cabin a colored lithograph, 
 time-stained and torn of edge, but conspicu 
 ous as the one decorative object in the room. 
 In the dim light of fire and tallow candle she 
 could not see the subject, but she resolved to 
 126 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 inspect the picture closely when the meal 
 was finished. 
 
 Joe approached her as she stood before it 
 later in the evening. There was a curiously 
 excited look in his eyes as he fixed them on 
 her face. 
 
 " Do do you uns know her ? " he 
 asked, with repressed eagerness. 
 
 Andy, the elder son, pricked up his ears at 
 the sound of his brother s voice and turned 
 his mischievous glance toward the couple. 
 
 " Joe s sweethea t in N York," he laughed, 
 indicating the painted figure with his thumb. 
 " He hain t seen her yit, but he lows he s 
 agoin out in th worl t find her when the 
 time comes. He s mighty faithful to her, 
 Joe is. He won t look at any girl in these 
 pa ts. His hea t s in N York." 
 
 Joe disregarded his brother with the toler 
 ant dignity of a big mastiff annoyed by a toy 
 terrier. 
 
 " Do you uns know her ? " he repeated 
 urgently. 
 
 Miss Herrick in truth knew of her only too 
 well. All New York, all the world, in fact, 
 knew of the notorious Spanish woman whose 
 127 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 picture was the shrine of this honest moun 
 taineer in that innocent home. It had pleased 
 the original to pose, on one occasion, with 
 a demure sweetness on her Madonna-like 
 face. The look had been caught in all its 
 falseness, and told its lie to thousands in the 
 land too ignorant to know it as a pose. Miss 
 Herrick looked up at the big dark eyes that 
 gazed so pensively back at her, and wondered 
 why their baneful influence must be felt here, 
 of all places. She recalled, with an inward 
 shudder, the chain of wrong-doing which the 
 woman had wrought. Disgrace, ruin, death, 
 had been the portions dealt out by her small 
 jewelled hands. The newspapers had teemed 
 with the shame of it, and she had gloried in 
 the advertising. Miss Herrick remembered 
 interviewing her several times and hearing 
 her comment on those tragedies of her own 
 making. The soft lips that showed such a 
 pathetic curve in the picture had set like the 
 mouth of a snake on one of those occasions. 
 " The fools ! " she had cried. " If it had 
 not been I, it would have been some one else 
 who ruined them. These mothers boys need 
 to be how do you put it ? whipped into 
 128 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 shape. If they are worth anything, if they 
 have any real manliness, they come out the 
 better for being taken in hand by a woman 
 of the world. If they are worth nothing, the 
 world is better rid of them." 
 
 Miss Herrick looked at the white-haired 
 mountain woman, meditative in the firelight, 
 and told herself that Nancy Willis, who 
 could neither read nor write, was more for 
 tunate than many a rich and worldly mother 
 of her acquaintance. She had her fair, clean- 
 souled boy buried safe among the mountains, 
 living the free outdoor life of a young faun. 
 It was a far cry from New York to these 
 Virginia peaks. Surely even Dolorita s ma 
 lignant influence could not blast him here. 
 
 She answered the mountaineer s question 
 as fully as possible. 
 
 " Yes, I know her," she said, in a matter-of- 
 fact tone. " I suppose I may say that I know 
 her, for I have often interviewed her in my 
 professional capacity, that is, she has told 
 me things she wanted to have me put in the 
 paper," added Miss Herrick, correctively, 
 altering her phrase to the comprehension of 
 her hearer. " She is a dancer," she con- 
 9 129 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tinued. " She dances in public to amuse 
 people, as Salome danced before Herod in 
 the Bible, you know." 
 
 Miss Herrick rather prided herself on this 
 touch. She had noticed the well-worn Bible 
 on the old minister s pine table, and she felt 
 that the mountain family was thoroughly 
 familiar with it. She hoped the eager boy 
 beside her would grasp the significance of 
 her illustration. He proved that he did, in 
 part at least, by flushing scarlet. Then he 
 rose to the challenge with loyal warmth. 
 
 " She s good," he said, with quiet convic 
 tion. " Any one can see that, jes t look at 
 her." 
 
 His simple faith touched and silenced the 
 newspaper woman. 
 
 " Let him dream," she said to herself. 
 " After all, it can do no harm. It is n t the 
 woman he loves ; it s what he thinks she 
 is. Such an ideal in his life may be a good 
 influence. It would even up matters a little 
 if his love for Dolorita brought out the best 
 that is in him. The same influence has 
 brought out the worst there was in others, 
 often enough." 
 
 130 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 She wandered out of the cabin and into 
 the clearing before it, where she rested her 
 elbows on the top round of the log fence and 
 gave herself up to the charm of the scene 
 about her. In the light of the full moon 
 floating above, every object in the little glen 
 stood out with vivid distinctness. On all 
 sides towered the mountains, from whose 
 mysterious depths came the long-drawn, 
 melancholy cries of woodland things. The 
 stars that sparkled so keenly in the crisp at 
 mosphere seemed very near. New York and 
 the worries of every-day life were strangely 
 remote. Ruth Herrick drew a long breath 
 and thanked the fortune that had borne her 
 out of the turmoil of Park Row for a restful 
 interval in this ideal spot so close to nature s 
 heart. 
 
 The sagging rail under her elbows bent as 
 another pair of arms was placed upon it. 
 The mountain Adonis had found his oppor 
 tunity at last. He knew nothing of the 
 gentle art of approaching by degrees the sub 
 ject near his heart. He came to the point 
 with characteristic simplicity. 
 
 " You uns lowed in thar thet she wuz 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 a dancin woman," he began. " I Ve ben 
 studyin bout that sense ye spoke, an I want 
 to tell you uns haow I feel bout Her. You 
 uns kin tell Her some day, if so be I cyan t. 
 Andy told ye thet I m goin out in th worP 
 t find her. I aim t do thet." 
 
 He stopped for a moment as if for com 
 ment from his listener, but she did not speak. 
 
 " Hit s a long way to N York," he went 
 on slowly, " en p raps I cyan t git thar. 
 P raps if I did git thar she would n t hev me. 
 I dunno. Our customs is differ t frum yourn. 
 A man, he wuz a traveller, come yere oncet 
 n tol* us about em. That wuz six years 
 ago, but I haint fergot. He hed a picture uv 
 Her, too, en he give it tuh me, cos he seed 
 I liked it." 
 
 He stopped again. Miss Herrick was still 
 silent, awaiting the end of the strange heart 
 confidence. 
 
 "Yere in the maountains," he resumed, 
 " ef a man takes a liking to a gyrl he tells 
 her so, en ef she s took a liking to him they 
 build their cabin, n marry, n live in it, n air 
 ez happy ez the good Lord lets em be. 
 The s a lot uv comfort in puttin up a cabin 
 132 
 
From die Hand of Dolorita 
 
 fer the right woman. Andy s doin it naow. 
 He s makin chairs fer it, n I help him when 
 I kin. But I ain t never seed but one woman 
 I lowed I d like to make a home fer an 
 thet s Her." 
 
 Miss Herrick changed her position rest 
 lessly. The situation touched her sympathies, 
 but she was keenly conscious of its grotesque 
 side. Before her mind s eye came a sudden 
 vision of Dolorita as she had last seen her, 
 soft exquisite animal, in the luxurious lair she 
 had made for herself. Costly lace enveloped 
 her, diamonds flashed on her hair, throat, 
 fingers, and bare arms even from the 
 buckles on the little shoes, which alone cost 
 more money than Joseph Willis had ever 
 seen. This indolent, sensuous Thais, the one 
 woman in the world for whom he " lowed " 
 he d build a cabin here in these lonely 
 mountains ! 
 
 Miss Herrick looked up into the young 
 man s frank eyes. She was not a small 
 woman, but they were far above her. The 
 expression of perfect trust she saw in them 
 moved her to answer him as simply and as 
 directly as he had talked to her. 
 133 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 " Here in the mountains, my dear boy," 
 she said, " people are what they seem to be. 
 They are nature s sons and daughters, and 
 the truth is in them. c Out in the world/ as 
 you say, it is often different. Men and 
 women say what they do not think and act 
 what they do not feel, and we call it refine 
 ment and cultivation and civilization. It is 
 not so with all, thank Heaven. Some are 
 honest and true, and they keep alive in us the 
 spirit of brotherhood that we all need. But 
 the lack of more universal sincerity and 
 loyalty makes life very hard for us sometimes. 
 We are deceived in the persons we love, and 
 we find out that we have loved not them, but 
 what we thought they were. That is your 
 case. You have thought and dreamed about 
 this woman for six years. She has grown to 
 be something very beautiful, very sweet, very 
 real, in your life. That is because she was 
 rooted in your heart and drew those qualities 
 from it. Few women could realize your 
 dream of her least of all Dolorita. She is 
 not in one single respect what you think she 
 is. You are a strong man. You could not 
 show your strength in a finer way than by 
 134 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 uprooting this woman from your mind and 
 heart. Forget her. There are sweet true 
 girls here among the mountains. There is 
 surely one among them who could make you 
 happy. Do as your father and grandfathers 
 have done before you. Marry and live here 
 in your mountains contentedly among your 
 own people." 
 
 He listened in silence until she ended, his 
 eyes on the distant hills. Then he looked 
 down at her, a slow smile transfiguring his 
 face. 
 
 "You uns is good t tell me right out 
 whut ye think," he said gratefully. " But I 
 reckon it s best fer me t find aout things fer 
 m self. Father lows we don t gain much by 
 the experience uv others," continued this 
 novice philosopher of the mountains, " n I 
 reckon he s right. It s too late t talk 
 abaout uprootin the liking I have fer Her. 
 Ye might ez well tell me t uproot thet tree 
 ith m hands." 
 
 He indicated a sturdy oak near them as he 
 spoke. 
 
 u I reckon I 11 give her th chanst t send 
 me back yere, ef she wants ter," he con- 
 135 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 eluded proudly. " Does she live in N York 
 naouw ? Th traveller man lowed she wuz 
 thar most uv th time." 
 
 "She comes every year," admitted Miss 
 Herrick. " Yes ; she is there now," she 
 added quickly, as she recalled the lurid posters 
 and placards that had heralded the glad tidings 
 to the metropolis. 
 
 " I reckon I 11 come an find her," re 
 peated the young man quietly, as his final 
 word. 
 
 Miss Herrick found herself thinking of his 
 decision after she had left his home the next 
 morning. She reined in her horse at a point 
 in the road high above and looked down at 
 the small, peaceful cabin from whose chimney 
 the smoke was slowly curling. 
 
 " It would be like her to take him up for a 
 time," she mused, " if the novelty of the situa 
 tion appealed to her. It is n t every day that 
 an untamed mountain Apollo falls at her feet. 
 Then after she tired of him, he would probably 
 come back here and blow out his brains, and 
 incidentally break his mother s heart." 
 
 A bird in the branch above her suddenly 
 poured forth a jubilant flood of song. It was 
 
 136 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 like a native s protest against the thought. 
 Miss Herrick laughed at the interruption. 
 
 "That s right," she said. " We won t 
 borrow trouble." 
 
 She cast a last glance at the lowly home in 
 its opulent setting of autumn foliage, and at 
 the hills beyond. Somewhere below she 
 heard the gurgle of a mountain brook, hurry 
 ing toward the river. There was a keen 
 exhilaration in the morning air. Her horse 
 felt it as she did, and neighed impatiently to 
 be off. She settled herself more firmly in the 
 saddle, chirruped to him cheerily, and with a 
 spring they started on their long journey back 
 to the haunts of men. 
 
 One of the boys in "The Searchlight" 
 office came to her three weeks later, his 
 round eyes rounder than ever with the novelty 
 of his message. 
 
 " A big young fellow wants to see you, 
 Miss Herrick," he said. " He ain t got no 
 card, but he says you know him. He says 
 his name s Willis and that he comes from 
 the Virginia mountains." 
 
 Miss Herrick looked up from her work 
 with a sigh. This was u coming out in th 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 world tub find Her," without a doubt. It had 
 seemed such a remote possibility down there 
 among the mountains, but here he was. 
 
 " Show him up, please," she said to the boy 
 with a regretful glance at the story she was 
 writing. 
 
 He came blithely, with his swinging moun 
 tain stride, his free, outdoor air, his touching 
 unconsciousness of his homespun back-woods 
 garb. 
 
 " Did n t low you d see me so soon, did 
 yuh ? " he asked, as they shook hands. 
 
 He dropped into the seat she indicated and 
 plunged at once into the only subject in the 
 world for him. 
 
 " I jest lowed I d come right along," he 
 said. " You uns said she wuz yere naouw 
 n only come oncet a year, so I sold th colt 
 at th settlement an took whut money I hed 
 n come. I got yere this mornin n I want 
 you uns tub tell me jest whar she is so I kin 
 find her right off." 
 
 Miss Herrick mentioned the name of the 
 
 hotel where the dancer was staying and gave 
 
 him explicit instructions as to how to get 
 
 there. She felt sick at heart as she looked at 
 
 138 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 him, but there was plainly nothing to be done 
 but let him "find her" after his own fashion. 
 She watched him step into the elevator and 
 drop from sight. Then she wrote Dolorita a 
 note, which was a model in its way and over 
 which the Spanish dancer frowned reflectingly 
 for almost two minutes that afternoon. A 
 strong appeal to the woman seemed the only 
 course. " If there s any good left in her," 
 mused Miss Herrick, " and if the note reaches 
 her at an opportune time, it may have some 
 effect. If not, I Ve done all I can." 
 
 Dolorita s probable plan of action unrolled 
 itself before her. 
 
 u If she s in a good humor when he calls, 
 and if the situation amuses her," she thought, 
 " she 11 give him seats for the performance 
 to-night. He 11 have an opportunity to see 
 his idol in her glory," reflected the newspaper 
 woman, grimly. She was so certain of Dolo 
 rita s course that she dropped into the music 
 hall at which the latter was performing, about 
 ten o clock that night, to have the satisfaction 
 of verifying her prediction. Almost the first 
 object she saw was the fair head of the young 
 mountaineer, dimly outlined through the mists 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 of smoke about him. He sat in a box near 
 the stage. Two tired-looking young men in 
 evening clothes were with him. Unabashed 
 by the novelty of the scene or the blare of the 
 band, Joseph Willis was talking rapidly, his 
 eyes radiant, his white teeth flashing in his in 
 fectious smile. Dolorita had not yet come 
 on, but as Miss Herrick settled herself in her 
 seat the dancer s number went up in the 
 announcement rack, and large cards, emblaz 
 oned with her name, were hung on each side 
 of the curtain. The band struck into a 
 tingling Spanish dance, and the curtain rose 
 on an empty stage with a background of 
 Andalusian scenery. Out from the wings 
 came the favorite of the hour, and as the 
 superb figure in red and gold appeared, a roar 
 of greeting went up from a thousand throats 
 and rolled in a wave of sound across the 
 footlights. The melting black eyes of the 
 " wickedest woman in Spain " swept lan- 
 guishingly over the parquette, then turned for 
 a moment to a box just opposite where a 
 heart and soul looked back at her from a pair 
 of hungry blue ones. A queer little smile 
 curved her lips. Then she glanced at the 
 140 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 leader and threw herself into the dance that 
 had lifted her from the gutters of Seville and 
 brought Europe and America to her feet. 
 
 Miss Herrick, who had seen her many 
 times, decided that she had never danced so 
 well before. A number of Spaniards sat in 
 the front rows, whose excited cries in her 
 own tongue roused Dolorita to efforts that 
 electrified the house. Men stood up in their 
 seats and shouted, while flowers rained upon 
 the vivid figure that flashed about the stage, 
 the personification of the fire and passion of 
 Spain. 
 
 In the midst of it all, Miss Herrick glanced 
 up at the box where the young mountaineer 
 sat. His fair head had disappeared, but as 
 she looked more closely, she saw that his face 
 was buried in his arm, which rested on the 
 ledge of the box. His companions had for 
 gotten him and were shouting wildly with the 
 others. Miss Herrick turned away wonder- 
 ingly. As the audience dispersed after the 
 performance she lingered a little, looking 
 about for her protege. He came down the 
 long stairs with the blase young men, his 
 heroic figure towering above them. He had 
 141 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 regained his shaken composure, and was 
 listening quietly to the talk of one of them, 
 who was gesticulating with southern vehe 
 mence. The newspaper woman saw the three 
 step into a carriage and drive around to the 
 stage door. 
 
 " Dolorita has asked them all to supper," 
 she said to herself. 
 
 She went home, revolving many things in 
 her mind. Her thoughts turned with poig 
 nant persistence to the picture of Nancy 
 Willis, placidly dreaming in her chimney 
 corner. She also pictured Andy, fashioning 
 uncouth chairs for his bride s cabin. 
 
 "Ef Joe ever comes to N York you uns 
 11 look out fer him, wunt yuh ? " the moun 
 tain mother had asked, and Miss Herrick had 
 accepted so improbable a trust with the ready 
 unconcern of perfunctory kindness. She told 
 herself now, as she walked briskly toward 
 Broadway, that one of the wisest things in 
 life is to allow others to manage their own 
 affairs and that it was not her place to inter 
 fere in this one. Whereupon she promptly 
 decided to call on Dolorita in the morning. 
 
 That young woman received her in the 
 142 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 seclusion of her boudoir, where several women 
 ministered to her needs. One brushed her 
 wavy black hair until it shone, a second 
 polished her finger-nails, while a third sewed 
 busily on a mysterious combination of spangles 
 and tarlatan. Around her were strewn the 
 morning newspapers, containing accounts of 
 her ovation the night before. The reading 
 of these, just completed, had left Dolorita in 
 a most sunny mood. She received Miss 
 Herrick with Andalusian warmth of manner, 
 beneath which lay a genuine friendliness. 
 
 " I know why you are here," she said, 
 with pronounced archness. " It is about 
 your mountain infant. When I have sent 
 for you myself you have been so busy. 
 But for him you can come. Is it not so ? " 
 
 Miss Herrick smiled back at her appreci 
 atively, and came to the point with business 
 like directness. 
 
 u Yes, I have come about this strayed 
 mountain boy," she admitted good-naturedly. 
 " I want you to send him back to his 
 mother." 
 
 Dolorita lit a cigarette and took a long, 
 luxurious puff". She had offered her visitor 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 one, as she always did, and had received Miss 
 Herrick s courteous refusal with the wonted 
 air of sweet and regretful surprise. She was 
 learning the art of making " rings," and 
 essayed several with melancholy results, be 
 fore she got round to the lighter and more 
 easily managed matter of the enamoured 
 mountaineer. 
 
 " Why ? " she asked at length, with in 
 dolent curiosity. 
 
 " Because he is wholly out of his element 
 here," responded the newspaper woman, with 
 convincing candor. " He is as much out of 
 place in this role as a wild thing would be in 
 a cage. Besides, he is n t smart ; he is n t 
 entertaining ; he has n t a cent. He would 
 develop into an unmitigated bore. You 
 would have trouble in getting him off your 
 hands. The most sensible as well as the 
 kindest thing you can possibly do is to pack 
 him off home." 
 
 Dolorita laughed as she leaned back, 
 watching with half-closed eyes the obstinate 
 little puffs of smoke that would not form into 
 circles. 
 
 "Well, amlga mla, rejoice," she said, 
 144 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 lightly. " Your friend he is safe. He 
 has thrown me over. He will have nothing 
 to do with me. It is not flattering, but it is 
 the truth. He is already in his mountains 
 or on the way there," added Dolorita, vaguely. 
 
 " You mean ? " queried Miss Herrick, 
 blankly. 
 
 "Just what I say," repeated the other 
 woman. " He was disappointed in me. He 
 told me so at the supper, with all the 
 guests around. It was rather gay," con 
 fessed the dancer, innocently, " and he was 
 not pleased. He pushed back his chair, and 
 what do you call it ? preached us a sermon, 
 like a minister in a pulpit. It was funny. I 
 think we were frightened, for a moment. 
 Then he rushed away without his hat, and 
 we laughed and finished our supper." 
 
 " He 11 be at your feet to beg your pardon 
 in another hour, perhaps," suggested Ruth 
 Herrick, doubtfully. 
 
 The pupils of Dolorita s eyes contracted. 
 Her whole mobile face took on a film of 
 hardness. 
 
 " Not after what he said. He said very 
 ugly things. He seemed to have been read- 
 10 145 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 ing the stories your clever newspapers have 
 published about me." She laughed scorn 
 fully and shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " I tell you it is over," she said, " over 
 before it began. Your little boy is quite safe. 
 I should not permit that he pass the entrance 
 of this hotel," she added curtly. 
 
 Miss Herrick rose with a feeling of keen 
 relief that the interview and the incident 
 were ended. 
 
 " Thank you for telling me about it so 
 unreservedly," she said, with warmth, as 
 they shook hands. " I m very glad the 
 boy is going home." 
 
 She hurried away, and Dolorita looked after 
 her, an odd expression on her beautiful sel 
 fish face. 
 
 " She did me a good turn once," she said 
 to her maid, in Spanish, " when she published 
 my answer to that Van Dreer story. Now 
 we are quits. But she is a good woman, 
 and so she would never have believed me if 
 I had told her the truth. I shocked him 
 purposely, and I sent him away because 
 she asked it. A woman like myself would 
 believe that I might sometimes have a good 
 146 
 
From the Hand of Dolorita 
 
 impulse, but not Miss Herrick. Good 
 women are always hard on us bad ones. 
 And the boy really amused me. He was so 
 different from the others." 
 
 Dolorita frowned a little as she lit another 
 cigarette. Then her face cleared, and she 
 smiled as she regarded it for a moment in a 
 hand-glass. 
 
THE PASSING OF 
 HOPE ABBOTT 
 
 149 
 
THE PASSING OF HOPE ABBOTT. 
 
 MISS HERRICK looked at the card 
 rather critically. She was fastidious, 
 and its appearance did not please her. She 
 turned it over doubtfully, and read again the 
 name engraved on its rather worn surface 
 Miss Hope Abbott. There was no address. 
 
 " I don t know the woman," she said 
 reflectively. " I can t even remember having 
 heard the name before. Thank her for her 
 sympathy, Thomas, and say I regret that I am 
 not yet quite well enough to receive calls." 
 
 The bell-boy departed with the message, 
 and Miss Herrick turned to the trained nurse 
 who was still with her, but whose mission 
 now was to amuse the patient and save her 
 from her friends. " I suppose you would n t 
 have allowed me to see her in any case, you 
 tyrant," she said affectionately ; u but it 
 does n t matter, for I can t imagine who she 
 is or what she wants. Perhaps she has come 
 on business." 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 That Miss Abbott had not come on 
 business was shown by the return of Thomas, 
 bearing an enormous bouquet of sweet old- 
 fashioned roses and a large white package 
 tied with gold-colored thread. 
 
 " She sent you these things, Miss Herrick," 
 he said, as he put them on the table beside 
 the convalescent s chair. " I told her you 
 said you did n t know her," he added expan 
 sively, " and she said she knew you did n t 
 know her, but that she knew you. She 
 said she came to your office in the Search 
 light building once, and that you were very 
 kind to her, and she sent you these with her 
 love, and hoped that you would soon be back 
 at your desk again." 
 
 Miss Herrick looked at him helplessly. 
 She had worked hard over Thomas during 
 her three years of residence at the Hotel 
 Edward, but his methods still left much to 
 be desired. Her heart sank as she pictured 
 the well-meaning stranger carrying away the 
 memory of what must have seemed an un 
 gracious reception. She threw herself back 
 in her chair, and surveyed the roses with a 
 strange mixture of feelings, in which regret 
 I 5 2 
 
The Passing of Hope Abbott 
 
 predominated. It was certainly very kind 
 and sweet of this unknown woman to take 
 an interest in her and to send her these lovely 
 roses. Their perfume, laden with suggestions 
 of country gardens, rilled the room. The 
 nurse had put them into water, and was 
 opening the package which had accom 
 panied them. It contained five smaller par 
 cels, each carefully wrapped, and bearing the 
 name of a well-known Broadway merchant. 
 She untied these, in her quiet, capable way, and 
 her patient looked on with the interest which 
 small things excite during convalescence. 
 
 The first package contained an elegant little 
 cardcase with silver trimmings. In the second 
 there was a silver stamp-box. The third 
 held a pair of manicure scissors with gold 
 handles. From the fourth box the amused 
 nurse drew a little black silk purse with 
 silver mountings, and an investigation of the 
 contents of the last package disclosed an 
 ordinary crochet needle. 
 
 Nurse and patient smiled at each other irre- 
 pressibly,but Miss Herrick was no less touched 
 than amused by this odd collection of gifts. 
 
 " It looks precisely," she said, " as if some 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 well-meaning young farmer had gone to the 
 county fair and had there selected these 
 things as beautiful and appropriate offerings 
 for his Hebe. They re just about what he 
 would buy, I think, although he might have 
 overlooked the crochet needle. What was 
 the dear, queer woman thinking about ? And 
 who and what is she ? And how shall I 
 learn her address ? I can t keep all these 
 things. They must have cost a great deal 
 of money much more, perhaps, than she 
 could afford to pay." 
 
 As she spoke she opened the cardcase 
 and discovered a small card in one of the 
 pockets. It bore the simple legend of its 
 mate, Miss Hope Abbott, but on the 
 reverse side there were a few lines pencilled 
 in a fine, angular hand. 
 
 " To Miss Ruth Herrick," they read, 
 u from one who has always respected and 
 admired her and her work, and who has fol 
 lowed her illness with affectionate sympathy." 
 And then, further down, there was a line 
 which had evidently been added hastily, as 
 an after-thought "I did not mean to be 
 cross that day." 
 
 154 
 
The Passing of Hope Abbott 
 
 " Did not mean to be cross that day ! " 
 repeated Ruth Herrick, slowly. "What 
 day ? " She knit her straight brows in the 
 effort to recall some memory of an office visit 
 from some one who was cross from some 
 one who was named Miss Hope Abbott. " I 
 shall have a relapse in exactly five minutes," 
 she announced finally, " unless I solve this 
 mystery." 
 
 But she did not solve it. To all appear 
 ances Miss Hope Abbott had vanished ab 
 solutely. In vain Miss Herrick sought 
 information from her newspaper friends. In 
 vain did she herself, after her return to her 
 work on " The Searchlight," devote much 
 of her time and skill to attempts to discover 
 the identity of her mysterious caller. The 
 newspaper woman who had never " let go " 
 when she had gathered up the threads of a 
 big " story," was forced to admit to herself 
 that she was wholly at sea in this case. 
 
 She did, indeed, secure a clew from Tim, 
 the office-boy, a lordly youth whose business 
 it was to usher callers courteously into the 
 presence of the man they had not come to 
 see. Tim remembered Miss Abbott as a 
 155 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 woman who had called at the editorial rooms 
 of " The Searchlight " with original poems, 
 which she had confidingly left in his keeping. 
 He described her as a tall, gaunt woman of 
 middle age, very plainly dressed, and with 
 exceedingly pleasant manners. So favorably, 
 indeed, did Miss Abbott impress Tim that 
 instead of immediately losing her original 
 poems, as was his custom, he had kept them 
 to return to her when she came again, as she 
 had left no address. These poems he brought 
 to Miss Herrick s desk, and she recognized 
 at once the angular writing she had seen on 
 the card. The manuscripts were yellow and 
 dust-covered. Apparently Miss Abbott had 
 no intention of reclaiming them. Miss Her- 
 rick looked over the original poems. They 
 were crude efforts, hopeless from the editor s 
 point of view. She sighed as she returned 
 them to the boy, and realized that this clew 
 led her no nearer to the present whereabouts 
 of the writer. 
 
 She did not immediately forget her un 
 known friend. If she had been inclined to 
 do so the little scissors on her dressing-case 
 and the stamp-box on her desk would have 
 
 156 
 
The Passing of Hope Abbott 
 
 served as daily reminders. She still made so 
 many inquiries among her friends that " Ruth 
 Herrick s Miss Abbott " was jokingly referred 
 to in newspaper circles as a journalistic " Mrs. 
 Harris." " It is n t mere curiosity that moves 
 me," Miss Herrick explained to the smiling 
 ones ; " I d like to find her, for perhaps I 
 might be able to do something for her. I 
 don t believe she has too much money, not 
 withstanding her reckless way of making 
 gifts." 
 
 As the months went on, the whirl of met 
 ropolitan news-getting swept into the back 
 ground the memory of her strange caller. 
 It was almost a year after her visit that Miss 
 Herrick, sitting at her desk one stormy 
 winter day, stopped her work long enough 
 to glance at the copy of the evening paper 
 which a boy had just placed at her elbow. 
 Her eye fell on the " scare-head " of a sensa 
 tional story on the first page. It set forth in 
 heavy type the fact that a woman had just 
 starved to death in a lonely little cottage, in 
 a small town in New Jersey. She had been 
 an educated woman, a teacher. She had 
 lived alone, and was apparently friendless j 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 she had been missed for a few days, and yes 
 terday neighbors had broken into the house 
 and had found 
 
 Miss Herrick shivered, and turned her eyes 
 toward the falling snow outside. The storm 
 had raged for days ; it was bitterly cold. 
 She had taken a cab to go uptown the pre 
 vious night, because she dreaded the short 
 walk across wind-swept City Hall Park. It 
 seemed almost incredible that in this year of 
 grace a gentlewoman had been permitted to 
 perish of cold and hunger within sight and 
 sound of her own kind. The newspaper 
 woman glanced at the page again, and sud 
 denly a name seemed to rise from it and 
 strike her like a blow. 
 
 She turned, to find Tim standing at her 
 elbow Tim, looking slightly awed, but 
 full of importance. u That s the woman, 
 Miss Herrick," he said, nodding toward the 
 newspaper that lay before her. " I came to 
 tell you as soon as I saw it ; I took some of 
 her poems to the city editor, and he is going 
 to print them in the next edition." 
 
 The u original poems " came out in the 
 next edition, with additional facts about the 
 
 158 
 
The Passing of Hope Abbott 
 
 victim of cold and starvation in the Jersey 
 hills. She seemed to have had no acquain 
 tances in the village. The little children 
 knew her, and many of them had home-made 
 playthings which she had given them. Their 
 parents had noticed the tall, gaunt figure 
 passing through the village streets, and 
 several of them recalled the smile that was 
 the woman s one beauty. They had not 
 called on her neither they nor she seemed 
 to have thought of that. And they had not 
 missed her during the week preceding her 
 death, for it had been so cold that few of the 
 women or children had ventured out. But 
 at last some one had noticed that there was no 
 light in the small, isolated house, and inves 
 tigation showed that there had been none for 
 a week, nor had there been food or fire. 
 And so they found her. 
 
 Miss Herrick read no more ; her vivid 
 imagination filled in the picture. She saw 
 the woman who had followed her illness 
 " with affectionate sympathy " awaiting her 
 own fate with a grim pride which not even 
 death could conquer. She thought of the 
 days and nights of physical and mental agony 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 before the end came. She pictured to herself 
 that last night, when darkness fell and the 
 storm deepened, and was defied by light and 
 warmth and comfort in all the homes but 
 one. She could see that one. 
 
 The door of her office banged cheerfully 
 as the editor of the " Searchlight s " woman s 
 page came in, pulling the collar of her jacket 
 up around her throat. 
 
 " Come out to dinner, Ruthie," she called 
 gayly. " I have to work to-night, and I 
 need the cheering influence of your society 
 while I eat." 
 
 Then, seeing the girl s face, she stopped 
 suddenly, and her own expression changed. 
 " Why, what s the matter, dear ? " she 
 asked, putting her hand affectionately on 
 her friend s shoulder. 
 
 Miss Herrick laid her cheek against it, 
 and closed her eyes with a little sob. 
 
 " I should not be a cheerful dinner com 
 panion to-night, Helen," she said. " I have 
 just found Miss Hope Abbott." 
 
 160 
 
A POINT OF 
 ETHICS 
 
 161 
 
A POINT OF ETHICS. 
 
 " A S I understand it," said Virginia Im- 
 /~JL boden, reflectively, " the question 
 resolves itself into this : To what extent can 
 a woman of irreproachable character assist 
 a woman of no character without being in 
 jured in the eyes of others ? " 
 
 Frances Neville changed her position rest 
 lessly, and lifted a hand in protest against 
 such an unqualified statement. 
 
 " You have put the case much too 
 strongly," she objected, "if you are speak 
 ing of Miss Bertram." 
 
 There was a slight irritability in her tone. 
 Miss Herrick, who was at the piano, care 
 lessly playing Chopin, caught it, and whirled 
 round on the stool to face the group of 
 friends who were scattered about her apart 
 ment in various attitudes of restfulness. 
 Virginia Imboden lay on the rug before 
 the grate, her fair head vividly outlined by 
 the dancing flames. Frances Neville was 
 stretched on the broad divan near her, and 
 163 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 in the depths of a great easy-chair Mrs. 
 Ogilvie, whose sombre gown recalled her 
 recent bereavement, had been dreamily lis 
 tening to the music, which swept her thoughts 
 back to the old days when she and John 
 were so happy together. 
 
 To her, as to Ruth Herrick, the words 
 just spoken were a discord in the harmony 
 of a social evening after the strain of the 
 week. Miss Herrick rose and turned on 
 the electric light, whose radiance, under silk 
 shades, threw a softened light over the apart 
 ment. Her guests, startled by the unex 
 pected illumination, blinked protestingly at 
 her as they changed their positions to more 
 conventional ones, while she drew the shades 
 to screen the rooms, with their picturesque 
 group, from the gaze of inquisitive neighbors. 
 Outside, the wind whimpered through the 
 courts of the big hotel, and the cheerless rain 
 of November beat against the window-panes. 
 Mrs. Ogilvie lent ear to it for a moment, and 
 turned with a little shiver from the mental 
 contemplation of the obtrusive grave on the 
 hillside to the homely picture of the firelight 
 blazing on the hearth. 
 
 164 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 " If you girls are going to discuss that sub 
 ject," laughed Miss Herrick, apologetically, 
 " you will need all the light there is. Rumi 
 nating in the dark, to Polish music, is apt to 
 make one s point of view a little morbid." 
 
 She dropped into a " cosey hollow " near 
 the fire and clasped her hands behind her 
 head in her favorite attitude of rest and 
 reflection. 
 
 "Now that we have the honor of your 
 attention you shall decide the question for 
 us," said Miss Imboden, with conviction. 
 " It must be taken up and disposed of. It s 
 something we have to settle, and we cannot 
 shirk the issue any longer." 
 
 Ruth Herrick smiled down at the earnest 
 face upturned to her. 
 
 " You make it highly impressive, Virginia," 
 she said gently, u almost too impressive, I 
 think; for, after all, the issue, as you call 
 it, is a very simple one. It has to do with a 
 bright and charming young woman who has 
 come among us, of whom we know little, 
 but of whom we have grown very fond. 
 Is n t that all ? " 
 
 " How trying you are ! " murmured her 
 
 65 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 friend, protestingly. She drew her dark 
 brows together in a frown, then went on 
 quickly. 
 
 " That is n t all. It is n t even the begin 
 ning. Here is the situation, impartially put. 
 A woman (young, and clever, and charming, 
 I grant you) comes to us from nowhere. 
 Her life, so far as we are concerned, appar 
 ently began the day we met her. None of 
 us has heard a word from her of home, or 
 parents, or friends. None of us knows where 
 she came from, or what or who she is. Be 
 fore we realized what this might imply we 
 became fond of her, as you say. Insensibly 
 she grew into our affections and our lives. 
 We asked her no questions and she volun 
 teered no information. After this condition 
 has been existing for several months we dis 
 cover that she is a marked woman in our 
 profession, that she is credited with a past, 
 that her reserve, reticence, and gayety are 
 making her talked about, and that we are 
 coming in for some share of the the 
 well, feeling that exists about her. Now, if 
 this is so, are we held to her by our friendly 
 interest ? If we knew she was all right it 
 166 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 would be different, because then we could 
 speak about her with the force and courage 
 that we should have. But we don t know, 
 and that s the trouble." 
 
 Miss Herrick became serious. 
 
 " I did n t know it was so bad as that," 
 she said quietly. She looked at the others 
 with a question in her glance. Even Mrs. 
 Ogilvie lowered her head in reflective con 
 sideration of Miss Imboden s statement. 
 
 "I had not realized," continued the hostess, 
 gravely, "that it had gone so far. The 
 problem has seemed to me a very simple one 
 no problem at all. Whatever the girl 
 has been, she is now all that she should be, 
 so far as we know. We know how hard 
 she works, how plainly she lives, how lonely 
 she is except for our affection and our com 
 panionship. If she has done wrong and is 
 trying to make amends, this is no time for us 
 to push her back. Surely, as her friends, we 
 should give her all the help we can. I don t 
 wish to dictate or to suggest to any one of 
 you what her course should be, but to me we 
 seem very smug and virtuous as we sit here 
 criticising this girl from our own self-assured 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 little pedestals. How do we know what 
 environment and temptations she may have 
 had ? How do we know what we should 
 have done if we had been in her place ? I 
 shall certainly continue to love her and to 
 tell her so. And if the uplifting influence 
 of my society will help her," ended the girl 
 more lightly, " she shall have all that I have 
 time to give her." 
 
 She crossed to the piano and drifted into 
 the rhythmic melody of the Twelfth Noc 
 turne, while Mrs. Ogilvie leaned her cheek 
 against the unresponsive wood of the instru 
 ment and listened. From her comfortable 
 rest on the big divan Miss Neville took up 
 the discussion. 
 
 " You were always something of a prig, 
 Virginia," she said, with vivacious bluntness. 
 " But you re fairly distinguishing yourself 
 to-night. You J re not talking to Park Row. 
 You re talking to Miss Bertram s friends." 
 
 Miss Imboden flushed a little. 
 
 " I don t forget that I m speaking to my 
 own friends, too," she said with dignity. 
 " If you have any idea that I would say 
 these things to anybody else, banish it." 
 168 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 She raised her voice a little, above the 
 seductive swing of the music. 
 
 "Surely you don t misunderstand me 
 all of you," she urged. u I don t want to 
 seem c smug and self-satisfied, as Ruth puts 
 it. No one is fonder of Miss Bertram than 
 I. But I m alone here in New York, and I 
 have nothing in the world except my health, 
 my very ordinary journalistic ability, and my 
 reputation as a c hard-working and respectable 
 lady, to quote my appreciative janitor. Can 
 I afford to jeopardize the most precious of 
 these by being the acknowledged friend of 
 a woman whose reputation is, as a matter 
 of fact, the subject of unpleasant talk? My 
 mother sits in our little home out West read 
 ing the newspaper clippings about my work 
 and pasting them in a scrapbook. Every 
 word she reads or hears about me is precious 
 gold to her. Can I run the risk of having 
 my name and hers carelessly linked in news 
 paper gossip with another name that is men 
 tioned with sneers ? This is n t mere fancy. 
 It has been done already and in connec 
 tion with you, Ruth," she broke in suddenly, 
 wheeling about and facing her incredulous 
 
 169 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 hostess. " Herforth said to me to-day, I 
 saw Miss Herrick at the theatre the other 
 night with Miss Bertram. They re not 
 
 J 
 
 friends, are they ? and his accent of surprise 
 said more than he meant to, I assure you. 
 Mr. Davidson has spoken to Miss Neville 
 about it very nicely and guardedly, of 
 course, but what he said amounted to a 
 warning, and half a dozen of our women 
 friends have labored with us individually and 
 collectively along the same lines. You must 
 all admit that. I m willing to help Miss 
 Bertram in any way I can. I 11 advise her 
 about her stories, I 11 divide my assignments 
 with her, as we re both on space, but as for 
 c the precious boon of companionship, that s 
 another story ! Does my companionship do 
 her good enough to compensate for the harm 
 hers does me ? And what is true in my case 
 is true in yours. There is the situation in a 
 nutshell. I don t like to say these things. 
 I almost hate myself while I m saying them, 
 for they seem such worldly counsel. I know 
 how much finer Ruth s point of view is. 
 But we must remember where we are. 
 Truth is speaking to you, my friends, though 
 170 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 Truth realizes that it may not prevail in a 
 gathering which is decidedly not in sympathy 
 with the speaker." 
 
 She ended with a stage sigh, and the others 
 laughed, glad of any relief in a topic that had 
 been depressing to all. 
 
 " Does n t it seem to you," said Mrs. 
 Ogilvie, in her quiet way, "that before we 
 decide this question the person most con 
 cerned should be heard from? Surely there 
 is some way of learning the truth and of 
 defending her, or of getting her to defend 
 herself. The person we should hear from 
 next is " 
 
 "Miss Bertram," said Miss Herrick s 
 maid, at the door. With a quick and ex 
 pressive glance at the group, the hostess 
 went to meet the new arrival. 
 
 " If that had happened in a play," mur 
 mured Miss Imboden, "we should have 
 thought it a very forced situation. And yet 
 here she is, at just the right moment, to 
 speak for herself. Query, will she speak? " 
 
 The young woman who was entering the 
 room with Miss Herrick came forward with 
 the assured air of one who joins a circle of 
 171 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tried friends. She greeted the others with 
 the brilliant smile and charm of manner to 
 which they had all succumbed early in their 
 acquaintance with her, and sank contentedly 
 into a low seat near the fire. Her cheeks 
 were flushed by her encounter with the 
 boisterous wind outside, and a few drops of 
 rain sparkled on her dark hair. Looking at 
 her a little consciously, the group became 
 aware of a change in her manner a bright 
 ness, a sparkle, an apparent freedom from 
 care which they had not observed before. 
 Miss Herrick was the first to comment 
 upon it. 
 
 " You seem very happy," she said, resting 
 her hand affectionately on her friend s shoul 
 der. u I hope something nice has happened 
 to you." 
 
 Alice Bertram caught the caressing hand 
 in her own, and held it against her cheek with 
 such an ecstatic little laugh that the others 
 smiled in sympathy. 
 
 " I am happy," she said emphatically, " and 
 
 something very nice has happened. I have 
 
 won a big wager, I have proved the truth of 
 
 my most cherished theory, and to-night I m 
 
 172 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 at liberty to tell you girls all about it, 
 you dear girls who have been so good to me. 
 I shall never forget that. Do you suppose I 
 have n t realized how fine it has been of you 
 to take me as I am, without a question even 
 in your manner, to take me into your big 
 hearts so thoroughly and so warmly ? Every 
 day and every night I ve thought of the good 
 ness of it and the beauty of it. I 7 ve known 
 how strange my reserve must have seemed 
 to you. Any one but you would have tried 
 to break through it, and would have asked 
 me about the past I seemed so anxious to 
 conceal." 
 
 She looked at them fondly, her eyes rest 
 ing longest on Miss Herrick, who smiled 
 back at her in warm responsiveness. Vir 
 ginia Imboden had colored a little, but was 
 looking at the new arrival with a reflection 
 of the other woman s joy in her clear eyes. 
 Miss Neville and Mrs. Ogilvie were elo 
 quently silent. Alice Bertram s glance swept 
 round the circle and rested reflectingly on a 
 ring on Miss Herrick s hand, which she had 
 kept in her own. She twisted this about 
 rather nervously as she continued. 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 " You must have wondered who I am. 
 I know you have realized that I am not 
 what I seemed to be. The part I played 
 was so new to me that I m afraid I did n t 
 do it very well. I m going to ask you to 
 let me tell you the whole story to-night. I 
 warn you, though, that it s very egotistical, 
 and I shall talk about myself the whole time ! 
 I came to tell it to Ruth and to ask her to 
 pass it on. It is part of my good fortune to 
 find you all together, for I m going away to 
 morrow, and shall not return. I m so glad 
 my last night in New York will be spent 
 with you." 
 
 She stopped for a moment. 
 
 " Going away ! " they echoed, in dismal 
 chorus. Mrs. Ogilvie crossed the room and 
 dropped onto the ottoman at Miss Bertram s 
 feet, her eyes full of tears. 
 
 " We shall be so sorry to lose you," she 
 said softly. 
 
 u I know I m sure you will," the girl 
 told her, looking down into the wet eyes with 
 a responsive dimness in her own. " But 
 we re not parting forever. I m going out 
 of newspaper work for all time. But I hope 
 174 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 to see you girls very often, in the years to 
 come." 
 
 She laughed a little nervously. 
 
 " I hardly know how to start my story," 
 she said. " I feel as if I ought to say I 
 was always a strange child, as the romantic 
 heroines of fiction usually begin. I was not 
 an especially strange child, but my father 
 was and is a strange man. You all know 
 of him." 
 
 She mentioned the name of a man famous 
 throughout the country as one of the West s 
 great mining kings. His eccentricities of 
 character were as conspicuous and as much 
 discussed as his vast wealth. The news 
 paper women recalled the printed stories of 
 his princely home, his beautiful wife, his 
 munificent gifts to various public enterprises, 
 and, above all, his odd theories and experi 
 ments. Despite his wealth, he had socialistic 
 leanings, and was idolized by his miners, they 
 knew. And this was his daughter, this 
 quietly attired young woman who had worked 
 side by side with them for six months in the 
 relentless grind of journalism. 
 
 " When I left college," continued that 
 175 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 young person with a businesslike air, " my 
 father naturally assumed that I would de 
 velop into the modern product that he most 
 despised, the society girl. My brothers, of 
 course, he took in hand as soon as they were 
 graduated. He gave them a rigorous busi 
 ness training, and they had to work their way 
 from the bottom as faithfully as if they had n t 
 a cent. They were bright boys, and father 
 was very proud of the way they got on. He 
 used to talk about it a good deal, and then 
 look at me and sigh. It was trying, espe 
 cially as I had some of his spirit in me, I 
 suppose, so I resolved to give him a little 
 surprise. Am I boring you to death ? " 
 
 She looked deprecatingly at the interested 
 faces around her, and, reassured by their ex 
 pressions and emphatic denials, went on. 
 
 u One day my father was particularly vig 
 orous in his denunciation of idle women. I 
 felt, foolishly, that his remarks were directed 
 at me. He was really very fond of me, but 
 I think he classed me with my pet kitten in 
 the matter of intelligence, notwithstanding my 
 university diploma. I let him talk until he 
 had finished, and then I told him calmly that 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 I was quite as competent to support myself 
 as my brothers were, and that I could, if 
 necessary, earn as much money in a year as 
 they had earned during their first year of 
 work. 
 
 u My father laughed good-naturedly at this," 
 added Miss Bertram, smiling again at the 
 recollection. " He scoffed at the whole idea 
 as utterly absurd. It piqued me, and on the 
 impulse of the moment I made a wager with 
 him. 
 
 u On my twenty-first birthday he had in 
 vested a very large sum of money for me. 
 I was to have the yearly income to spend. I 
 offered to wager the entire sum (everything 
 I had in the world, you see) that I could go 
 to a strange city, take a new name, and earn 
 my own living for six months. I was not to 
 take a penny with me, except the money to pay 
 for my ticket to New York, and I was not to 
 borrow a cent from anybody. I was to pay 
 for my own clothes, food, and lodgings for six 
 months. If I failed, every cent I had in the 
 world would go back to my father, and I was 
 to live for five years on what he chose to give 
 me. If I succeeded, he was to double the 
 12 I77 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 gift he made me on my twenty-first birthday, 
 and he was to consent to my going abroad at 
 the end of the experiment for a post-graduate 
 course in German universities." 
 
 She stopped for breath, while her hearers 
 closed about her with enthusiastic comments 
 and questions. 
 
 " I have succeeded," she told them, with 
 shining eyes. " The six months ended last 
 night, and I sent my father a telegram. I 
 also sent him a telegraphic copy of the 
 amounts of my weekly earnings, which c The 
 Searchlight s auditor gave me when I asked 
 for it. I have not been a brilliant journalis 
 tic success, but I have supported myself in 
 comparative comfort. Working on space, I 
 have averaged twenty dollars a week for six 
 months. My brothers did not earn more 
 than fifteen when they began to make their 
 living. 
 
 " I told the city editor last night that I was 
 going to resign, and he asked me to recon 
 sider the matter, and said he d put me on a 
 weekly salary of twenty-five dollars if I would 
 stay. Of course he has n t the faintest idea 
 who I am. I got him to write out the offer, 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 and to-night I m going to mail it to my 
 father, just for glory and to down him 
 more thoroughly. Before I left my room to 
 night I got a telegram from him. Here it 
 is. Is n t he a dear ? " 
 
 She unrolled the slip of yellow paper and 
 gave it to Miss Herrick, who passed it round 
 to the others. The girls read it eagerly. 
 
 " Our loving congratulations. Your mother 
 and I are prouder than ever of our girl. 
 Come home at once and show your brothers 
 how to make a success of life." 
 
 u Is n t he fine ? " repeated his daughter 
 with conviction. " I m going home to 
 morrow. I have saved enough to take me 
 there in a new gown and with a general effect 
 of affluence. I shall have the best accom 
 modations all the way. It will take the very 
 last cent I have saved, but that does n t 
 matter. I Ve won my wager and I m 
 content ! " 
 
 She tossed the telegram into the air and 
 caught it again with a gay laugh. 
 
 " I have no regrets over the end of my 
 newspaper life," she added soberly, " except 
 that I shall miss you girls dreadfully. I ve 
 179 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 grown very fond of you." She hurried on as 
 if not daring to dwell on this too long. " I m 
 going abroad almost immediately, to be gone 
 two years ; so I shall not see you for that 
 time, unless you run over there. My fam 
 ily will come next summer, as usual, and we 
 shall travel about I don t quite know where. 
 Of course the work was hard and often un 
 pleasant, but now that it s over, I don t 
 mind that." 
 
 She folded the telegram and her face 
 clouded at a sudden recollection. 
 
 " I don t know whether you have heard 
 this," she said, " but it has come to me 
 within the last day or two that a few busy- 
 bodies have been saying unpleasant things 
 about me. They re the type who won t 
 admit that they don t know everything. They 
 know nothing about me, so they made up 
 some interesting and exciting yarns and told 
 them freely. I believe they have made me 
 out a sort of adventuress." 
 
 Her lips curled as she spoke. Evidently 
 she had no idea of the nature of the " in 
 teresting and exciting yarns " she mentioned. 
 u I m glad I did n t know about it sooner," 
 1 80 
 
A Point of Ethics 
 
 she ended lightly. " It might have worried 
 me. I hate to have my affairs talked over 
 by strangers." 
 
 She rose as she spoke, but let them sweep 
 her back into her chair amid a whirl of pro 
 testations, for another hour of excited ques 
 tions, ejaculations, and plans for the future. 
 Then they let her go, promising to see her 
 off for the West the next day. 
 
 Left alone, her friends dropped meekly 
 into chairs and surveyed each other, Miss 
 Imboden with some embarrassment, Miss 
 Herrick a little triumphantly, the others smil 
 ing in serene acceptance of the situation. 
 
 Miss Imboden spoke first, as befitted the 
 young person who had discoursed so fluently 
 on the same subject earlier in the evening. 
 
 " It s all delightful," she said, " and I m 
 heartily glad. I hope you won t set me down 
 as a double-dyed young prig who goes about 
 tearing her friends up by the roots in her 
 anxiety to discover whether they are good 
 enough for her. Do you think I should 
 have told Alice that I have not been as as 
 loyal to her as she thought me ? " she asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 181 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 Miss Herrick responded promptly. 
 
 u Not for the world," said she. " This 
 is an easy problem. I saw the deadly pur 
 pose in your eye toward the end of the even 
 ing and stopped it with an awful glare. That 
 was emphatically the time for one of your 
 c brilliant flashes of silence. 
 
 She helped Miss Imboden into her coat 
 and tucked in her sleeves with sisterly care. 
 
 "A certain amount of precaution is an 
 excellent thing, little girl," she said seriously. 
 u Theoretically you were all right. Practi 
 cally you were wrong, as you now know, in 
 this case. The rest of us felt that, because 
 we re older and more experienced than you. 
 Perhaps we read human nature a little better." 
 
 A sudden thought struck her, and notwith 
 standing Miss Imboden s flushed cheeks she 
 added, teasingly : 
 
 " After all, the great question of the even 
 ing is still unsettled : To what extent can a 
 good woman help an erring sister without 
 being injured in the eyes of others? Think 
 it over, Virginia dear, and let us know ! " 
 
 Miss Imboden has not solved her problem 
 yet. 
 
 182 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE 
 CITY ROOM 
 
 183 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE CITY 
 ROOM. 
 
 MISS BANCROFT raised her eyes 
 from her work and turned them 
 absently upon the small messenger who had 
 stopped at her desk. They were beautiful 
 eyes " like no other eyes in the world," 
 one infatuated young reporter had solemnly 
 affirmed; but to-night they were tired and 
 rather sad. Miss Bancroft had had a trying 
 day. She had pursued an elusive news 
 " story " the length and breadth of the city 
 until late at night before finding it. She had 
 been thrown into contact with a great many 
 disagreeable persons. Moreover, she had had 
 the depressing experience of seeing the in 
 dividual who knew most about the story walk 
 cheerfully away with a man reporter, ostensi 
 bly to have a drink, but in reality, she was 
 sure, to give that youth exclusive information 
 for a rival newspaper. 
 
 As she wrote her story to-night in the city 
 room of "The Searchlight," she reflected 
 
 -85 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 gloomily that " The Globe " would probably 
 come out the next morning with a " beat " on 
 the same subject which would bring her 
 before the city editor for explanations that 
 she could not give and for a possible repri 
 mand that she was in no mood to accept. 
 She took from the boy the package and note 
 he offered her, both of which, she noticed, 
 bore her full name plainly printed on the type 
 writer. As there was no time to examine 
 them she placed them carelessly on one side 
 of her desk, among a mass of accumulated 
 mail, and returned to her work philosoph 
 ically determined to make the most of the 
 material she had secured. 
 
 Her pen flew steadily over the paper for an 
 hour, and sheet after sheet was added to the 
 pile of " copy " at her right hand, wherein her 
 story was told in the clear, concise fashion 
 for which she was noted. When the last 
 word had been written she glanced at the 
 clock over the night city editor s desk. It 
 was after twelve. There was no sound in 
 the room but the clatter of typewriters, the 
 scratching of the swift pens of her associates, 
 and the shuffling feet of office boys who filed 
 186 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 in and out with messages and copy. In the 
 pitiless glare of the electric light the faces 
 round her looked worn and haggard. She sent 
 her story to the night city editor s desk, and 
 leaning back in her chair in the moment of 
 relaxation after a mental strain, sympathized 
 with herself and her fellow-workers with the 
 intensity of overtired nerves. Was it all 
 worth while ? she asked herself wearily, as 
 she had asked many times before. She 
 thought of the home down South, which she 
 had left so hopefully three years ago to seek 
 her fortune. As she closed her eyes she 
 could see every feature of the old house 
 nestled so cosily in its setting of blossoming 
 shrubs. Again she heard the sighing of the 
 night wind among the pines and the sleepy 
 call of birds to one another. She could 
 almost smell the perfume of the roses that 
 climbed over the verandas and looked in at 
 the windows of her own little room. In 
 fancy she saw that room, its walls covered 
 with the pictures she loved, the dwarf book 
 case filled with her favorite books, the desk at 
 which she had written her first ambitious 
 " literary " efforts, the small white bed where 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 she had slept such deep, untroubled sleep in 
 those peaceful days that seemed a thousand 
 years ago. Perhaps her mother slept there 
 to-night, dreaming of her " little girl " all alone 
 in far-away New York. A great wave of 
 homesickness swept over the newspaper 
 woman as she came back with a shock to 
 the present. 
 
 At his official desk, the night city editor 
 was scowling over some telegrams which 
 had been placed before him. Herforth, the 
 star reporter, had finished a page w special " 
 and was executing a small and quiet jig 
 beside his chair by way of " restoring his 
 circulation," as he put it. Several others 
 were collecting and paging the scattered 
 leaves of their copy, preparatory to handing 
 it in, while a number of less fortunate report 
 ers worked on hurriedly with an occasional 
 anxious glance at the clock. Over the 
 whole room hung the tense atmosphere of 
 a newspaper office late at night. In the 
 nervous depression of the moment Miss 
 Bancroft forgot the brighter side of her 
 work, of which she was keenly appreciative 
 in her normal frame of mind. Her dark 
 188 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 head drooped wearily, and her gloom deep 
 ened, as she mechanically arranged her papers 
 and began to search vaguely for the key of 
 her desk. She had forgotten the messenger s 
 package and note, both of which stared up 
 at her with mute reproach as her eyes fell 
 thoughtlessly upon them. 
 
 She lifted the package from its resting- 
 place and untied the string with listless 
 ringers. As she tore off the wrapping-paper 
 and raised the lid of the long box, she uttered 
 a little exclamation of delight which made 
 Randall, at the next desk, look up from his 
 work with a sympathetic smile. Carefully 
 tucked away under waxed paper, and resting 
 on a bed of moss and ferns, were exquisite 
 red roses, whose breath seemed like a greet 
 ing from the southern land to which her 
 homesick soul had but now turned. The 
 reporter buried her face in their dewy fra 
 grance, while her eyes for a moment grew 
 dim. It was very sweet to realize that some 
 one had been thinking of her and planning 
 this pleasure for her to-night of all nights. 
 She looked for the card which should have 
 accompanied the flowers, but found none 
 189 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 either among the roses or in the box. The 
 latter she now observed lacked the usual im 
 print of the florist. There was absolutely 
 nothing on it to show whence or from 
 whom it had come. The note was still 
 unopened, and to this she turned. A thick 
 sheet of creamy paper, typewritten on both 
 sides, fell from the envelope as she cut the 
 edges. It bore neither date nor signature, 
 but the printed words stood out boldly on 
 the white page, and these were clear enough. 
 Miss Bancroft crossed her feet comfortably, 
 leaned back in her chair, and began to read. 
 
 "DEAR Miss BANCROFT, You do not know 
 me, and I beg that you will make no effort to dis 
 cover who I am. Excellent reasons forbid my 
 coming to you and telling you what you are to 
 me. There is a barrier between us which nothing 
 can remove, and I can only look from behind it for 
 such glimpses of your face as I may get. To you 
 I can be only a shadow. To me you have been 
 and are the inspiration that has helped me to go 
 steadily on in the way marked out for me. Per 
 haps it may please you a little to know this, and to 
 realize that there is a human being near you whom 
 your mere existence has made happy. Sometimes 
 190 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 I know that you are tired, for I can see behind the 
 brave, unflinching spirit you show to the world. 
 At such times I long to say something to comfort 
 you but I may not. Will it interest you to 
 know that you have a devoted and unselfish friend 
 to whom you are more than all the world ? If it 
 will, remember this. Please accept the roses as a 
 small reminder of the southern land we both love." 
 
 Miss Bancroft experienced a revival of 
 interest in life. She read the letter again, 
 seeking vainly for some clew which might 
 lead to discovery of the writer. Her thoughts 
 swept quickly around the circle of her friends 
 and associates on " The Searchlight." As 
 suredly one of these was the man. One by 
 one she called them up in mental review, 
 dismissing some quickly, others more doubt 
 fully, but all finally. She glanced again at 
 the bowed heads of the men around her. It 
 was impossible to picture any of them as the 
 author of the letter she held in her hand. 
 Several of them had loved her and had told 
 her so, with the engaging frankness of their 
 kind. Many of the others were happily mar 
 ried or engaged, or in love with " sweet girls " 
 whose photographs they had exhibited to her 
 191 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 with pride. A few were too cold or too 
 ambitious, she thought, to care for any one. 
 The barrier of which her unknown friend 
 wrote was a tangible one. It concealed him 
 well. 
 
 Miss Bancroft took the note and flowers 
 home with her that night and fell asleep with 
 the fragrance of the roses filling her rooms. 
 It greeted her again as she awoke refreshed 
 and ready to take up the work of the day in 
 her usual blithe spirit. The morning sun, 
 pouring through her open windows, fell lov 
 ingly on the great roses which some one had 
 lavished on her. She speculated over them 
 pleasantly as she dressed, but after she reached 
 the office its rush and swirl banished them 
 and the sender from her mind. 
 
 She had almost forgotten both when the 
 second letter came exactly a week later. 
 The long box and the creamy envelope lay 
 side by side on her desk as she entered " The 
 Searchlight s " city room late Friday night, 
 and she broke into a gay smile even over 
 these prosaic things. It made Randall, sit 
 ting next to her, speculate long and moodily 
 as to the giver. There was no uncertainty 
 192 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 about her facts on this occasion, and she 
 plunged into her story with a vigor and evi 
 dent zest which made the muscles in the 
 lips of the night city editor relax percept 
 ibly as he observed her. When he glanced 
 at her again two hours later she had finished 
 her story and was lifting a mass of dewy red 
 roses from the long box, whereupon the night 
 city editor looked wise and thought he under 
 stood the situation, but did not in the least. 
 
 The second letter, written on the type 
 writer like the first, was a little longer than 
 its predecessor. Miss Bancroft read and re 
 read it slowly. 
 
 "DEAR Miss BANCROFT, Your acceptance of 
 the flowers made me very happy. It is infinitely 
 sweet to me to have even so slight a bond between 
 us as the presence of my roses in your home. Will 
 you let them speak for me as I may not speak for 
 myself? They will ask for nothing; they will 
 only tell you that in the big and selfish world in 
 which we live there is a man who loves you, who 
 is watching over you, who is doing all that a shadow 
 can do to guard you and smooth the path for the 
 dear feet that should not be making life s journey 
 all alone. The knowledge of this cannot hurt you. 
 13 193 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 There is nothing disrepectful in the honest love of 
 a man, even though that man is unknown. I know 
 there are many others who love you, too. I do 
 not know whether there is any one who has won 
 your heart. I do not seek to know. I believe 
 I love you well enough, unselfishly enough, to 
 rejoice when some happy man, who is worthy 
 of you, marries you and takes you away from us. 
 Every womanly woman is happiest in the home 
 of a loving wife, and you are all womanliness. 
 Good-night. Take the roses home with you, 
 and let them speak of rest, and peace, and happy 
 dreams." 
 
 There was a puzzled look in Miss Ban 
 croft s brown eyes as she laid the letter down. 
 She speculated over it on her way home that 
 night, and the next day, to her dismay, she 
 discovered that the mystery was making her 
 self-conscious. She found herself looking 
 with suspicious eyes at her good friends on 
 " The Searchlight." The frank and warm 
 camaraderie of her associates, which had 
 been so pleasant a feature of her journalistic 
 life, seemed to her now, in some spots, the 
 cloak of a deeper affection. She tried to 
 analyze the feeling back of the courtesies 
 194 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 that were shown her, and the invariable 
 good fellowship with which she was treated. 
 She was, however, too well poised to per 
 mit this condition to last. As successive 
 Fridays came, always bringing their red roses 
 and their odd concomitant, a typewritten 
 letter which breathed the most delicate tender 
 ness, her interest in the unknown sender 
 grew deeper and softer. All unconsciously, 
 perhaps, her hidden correspondent was lay 
 ing bare his soul to the woman he loved. It 
 was a noble and upright soul, she recognized. 
 The whole world might have read the simple, 
 manly letters in which week after week he 
 poured out his heart to her. Nor were they 
 wholly sentimental letters. The Shadow 
 was consistent in his resolve to ask for 
 nothing while giving all. When she had 
 learned to acquiesce in his incognito and 
 ceased marvelling at his complete knowledge 
 of her and her life, she discovered, as the 
 months went by, that the strong personality 
 behind these weekly letters had become one 
 of the most powerful influences in her career. 
 The Shadow s point of view was unique. 
 His letters were sometimes long, sometimes 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 short, always interesting. He touched lightly 
 on many subjects, and she was the gainer. He 
 commented on the style of her stories. He 
 criticised her English, and gave her a list of 
 books for reference and study. He praised 
 her work freely, where there was ground for 
 praise, and criticised sharply and discrimi 
 natingly where censure was demanded. He 
 suggested and advised as only a loyal friend 
 could, and beneath it all was an under 
 current of deep, unselfish tenderness that 
 touched her heart. The sweet unspoiled 
 nature of the woman responded to this as the 
 flowers he brought her responded to her care 
 of them. Unconsciously, as time passed, she 
 grew to lean on him, to watch for his letters, 
 to rely on his judgment, to act in important 
 matters as she believed that he would have 
 her act. The atmosphere of his sturdy devo 
 tion was as real and as sweet to her as the 
 perfume of his roses. 
 
 " Don t be too pathetic in your pathetic 
 tales," he wrote her once. " Let your read 
 ers shed their own tears ; " and the memory 
 of the terse comment was a fixed one, which 
 strengthened her work materially. 
 196 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 " You are looking pale," he said another 
 time. " Take a few days off and go to 
 Avondale. It is only two hours from New 
 York, but it s plunged [in. the profoundest 
 slumber. It s the ideal spot for tired brains 
 and nerves. All around it are hills, which 
 shut out the big bustling world. In it are 
 quaint old-fashioned houses, and men and 
 women not less old-fashioned and equally 
 quaint. Over the peaceful little river that 
 flows through the town are rustic bridges, 
 where you can sit and dream, or fish if you 
 care to (you 11 never catch anything), and 
 look at the willows waving in the summer 
 breeze and the cows standing knee-deep in 
 the clover-fields. The air is full of the 
 perfume of old-fashioned flowers that grow 
 in every garden. You will find bowls of 
 them in your room at night, and the room 
 itself will smell of lavender. Go there, take 
 Lubbock s Pleasures of Life with you, 
 and forget for forty-eight hours that there is 
 a newspaper in the world." 
 
 The letter came to her one hot Friday night 
 in August. The next morning she took the 
 train for Avondale, where she spent two 
 197 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 ideally restful days. She found the little 
 town exactly as he had pictured it, and as 
 she strolled along its quiet streets she won 
 dered how the Shadow had come to know it, 
 and when he had been there last. For a 
 moment, the idea lingered with her that, per 
 haps, after all, they were to meet. It had 
 been more than a year since the first box of 
 roses had come to her as the one bright epi 
 sode of a depressing day. But if he had ever 
 been in Avondale, he had apparently come 
 and gone as mysteriously as he seemed to do 
 everything else. She made no secret of her 
 own identity or work, but the " quaint men 
 and women " who eyed her with such art 
 less curiosity gratified her with no reminis 
 cences, and had evidently never before seen 
 a representative of a great modern news 
 paper. Helen Bancroft went cheerily back 
 to her work and her role as the inspiration of 
 a shadow, and if the thought occurred to her 
 that the role was a trifle unsatisfactory be 
 cause of the steadfast obscurity of that 
 shadow, she stifled it as one would check 
 disloyal thought of a friend. The conviction 
 had already come to her woman s soul that 
 198 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 what he desired was best. She seemed to 
 herself to be living in two worlds one, the 
 rushing, practical planet on which she worked 
 by day ; the other, a peaceful, happy sphere 
 wherein he dwelt, and whither his letters 
 sometimes transported her. 
 
 For more than two years the letters and 
 the red roses came with unbroken regularity. 
 When at last a certain Friday evening 
 arrived and they did not, Miss Bancroft 
 stared at the top of her unvisited desk as 
 if some perplexing phenomenon had taken 
 place. She would have been scarcely less 
 surprised at the failure of a physical law 
 than by this lack of fidelity she could not 
 call it forgetfulness or indifference on the 
 part of the Shadow. The face of the world 
 seemed changed to her as she went home 
 that night, and the sudden realization of 
 what this meant made her heart contract. 
 Perhaps he was only testing her proving 
 to her at last what a factor in her life he 
 had come to be. But she rejected this 
 thought at once ; she did not know his name 
 or face, but she knew the man too well to 
 199 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 think self-love could thus claim him, even 
 for a moment. Perhaps all was not well 
 with him. There had been a persistent 
 minor note in his recent letters, bravely as 
 he had tried to stifle it. Last week s roses, 
 almost withered now, looked sadly up at her 
 as she entered her apartment. She had kept 
 the flowers, of late, until the next box came 
 to replace them. To-night, as she watered 
 the grateful roses, her imagination saw in 
 their droop and languor the mute symbol of 
 the passing from her life of something of 
 whose full sweetness she was just beginning 
 to be conscious. 
 
 The days went on, and brought no sign 
 from the Shadow. They all seemed alike 
 to the young reporter, who kept her sad 
 reflections in her own heart and gave no 
 outward sign. She felt her friend drifting 
 from her, perhaps through a misapprehension 
 which she had no power to correct. It was 
 as much beyond her to reach or affect him 
 as if he lived in truth in another world which 
 he had shared with her, but from which she 
 was now shut out. She missed his flowers, 
 she missed his letters ; above all, she missed 
 200 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 the sense of companionship and protecting 
 tenderness which had enveloped her so mys 
 teriously and so long. 
 
 She was recalling these things one cold 
 night in February when she wearily entered 
 her apartment. On the hearth, in her cosey 
 study, a bright fire burned cheerily. The 
 attentive maid had drawn up to it her favorite 
 easy-chair and had placed her slippers near 
 the warm glow. She sank into the chair 
 with a sigh of satisfaction, brushing the snow 
 from her jacket, and recklessly exposing the 
 soles of her little boots to the heat as she 
 settled her feet on the fender. The sudden 
 blaze that had greeted her had died down, and 
 the room was almost in shadow. As her 
 eyes wandered listlessly over her books and 
 pictures they fell on something oddly familiar. 
 Was that great vase on the table, which 
 had held the Shadow s offering for so long, 
 again full of fresh red roses ? Miss Bancroft 
 rubbed her eyes and looked more closely. 
 Had she fallen asleep and was she dreaming 
 of the roses that had filled it so constantly 
 until three months ago ? The perfume of the 
 flowers seemed very real. They w ere there 
 201 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 u the beautiful darlings ! " she whispered, as 
 she went to them and laid her face against 
 them. To her excited fancy they seemed 
 to laugh up at her. " Here we are again," 
 they said. "It s all right, everything is 
 unchanged ; " and the whole world was 
 brighter for the assurance. She lit the 
 gas hastily and rang the bell. There had 
 been no letter with the flowers, the little 
 maid told her. They had come without a 
 card about four that afternoon, and she had 
 taken them out of the box and put them in 
 water as she knew Mademoiselle would have 
 wished. The box ? But yes, here it is 
 a large and ornate affair, with the name of a 
 famous florist on its cover in gold letters. 
 This unusual feature surprised and temporarily 
 disturbed Miss Bancroft. Never before had 
 the Shadow sent her such a clew. Surely, if 
 she wished, it would be comparatively easy to 
 trace him now. She dismissed the idea from 
 her mind for the present. He was still her 
 friend, and all was well with him. He had 
 sent her the roses to tell her so. That was 
 enough. 
 
 She dressed for dinner in high spirits, put- 
 202 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 ting on her best gown in honor of this spiritual 
 caller, and singing a favorite song which was 
 in harmony with her mood. The little maid 
 smiled to hear again the blithe notes that had 
 been silent of late. 
 
 * For the spring, the spring is coming, 
 
 T is good-by to ice and snow, 
 Yes, I know it, for the swallows 
 Have come back to tell me so," 
 
 sang the soft contralto voice. Spring had 
 already come in her heart for the roses 
 told her so. 
 
 Herforth called on her after dinner, for 
 mally arrayed in his evening clothes, and 
 with a startling chrysanthemum in his button 
 hole. His first words lowered Miss Bancroft s 
 spirits. 
 
 " Got the roses, I see," he said, nodding 
 toward the blooming jacqueminots in the 
 vase on the table. 
 
 " Did did you send them ? " faltered 
 the girl. She was conscious of a sinking 
 sensation, as if something were falling away 
 from her. 
 
 u Only in a way," said Herforth at once. 
 203 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 41 1 acted as an agent." He had dropped 
 into an easy-chair, and as he spoke he re 
 garded her rather curiously with his sleepy 
 blue eyes. 
 
 " Do you remember Hatfeld ? " he went 
 on. " Awfully good-looking chap, with light 
 hair and dark eyes. Reserved, but I found 
 him one of the most charming fellows I ever 
 met when I came to know him. Nobody 
 on the paper knew him well except me. 
 Was n t at the office much except at night, 
 and then did his work in a little room off the 
 night editor s sanctum. I liked him and 
 dined with him a lot, and he used to let me 
 talk about you most of the time. Well, he 
 was consumptive, poor fellow. Did n t tell 
 me anything about it until three months ago, 
 when he went to Algiers for his health. The 
 night before he sailed we dined together, and 
 went afterwards to my room to smoke. Am 
 I boring you with all this." 
 
 " Go on, please," said Miss Bancroft, in a 
 low tone. 
 
 She was standing at the window looking 
 out at the snow, which was falling heavily. 
 The sudden question evidently startled her, 
 204 
 
A Romance of the City Room 
 
 for she shivered slightly as she turned toward 
 the young man and then glanced away again. 
 
 " We talked a good deal," continued Her- 
 forth, animatedly, " and I tried to brace him 
 up as well as I could. Prophesied that he M 
 come back in six months perfectly well 
 and all that sort of thing. It had no effect 
 on him, but he was awfully cool and plucky 
 about his condition. He told me that his 
 father and mother had both died of con 
 sumption, and that the doctors had given him 
 no hope. He said that was why he had 
 never married. He would not make the 
 woman he loved wretched and hand down 
 a legacy of physical ill to his children. And 
 then he said something that will interest 
 you." 
 
 Herforth had been speaking rather lightly, 
 but if she had noticed it Miss Bancroft would 
 have known that beneath the careless tone 
 lay a warm sympathy for his friend. She 
 did not notice it. She was not thinking: of 
 
 o 
 
 Herforth just then. His few words had 
 brought before her very vividly the farewell 
 scene he was describing. She saw the two 
 men together, and while the face of one was 
 
 205 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 hidden from her she could see in his attitude 
 the despair against which he had so bravely 
 fought. She left the window and sat down 
 in a low chair, her face a little in the shadow. 
 Herforth went on slowly and more seriously. 
 
 "Just before we parted, Hatfeld turned 
 to me and said : I m going to have them 
 cable you when it s all over, old man not 
 that I want to depress you, but because I 
 want you to do something for me. Don t 
 ask me why or anything about it. But when 
 you receive that cablegram, I want you to 
 send a box of red roses to Miss Bancroft. " 
 
 Herforth paused a moment and poked the 
 fire with creditable considerateness. His 
 voice had become a trifle unsteady. Though 
 he could not have analyzed it, for he knew 
 they had never met, there was something in 
 Miss Bancroft s manner as she listened which 
 moved him strangely. She looked at him 
 and opened her lips, but closed them again 
 without speaking. The expression in her 
 beautiful eyes made Herforth turn his own 
 away. 
 
 " I got the cablegram this morning," he 
 said softly. 
 
 206 
 
MISS VAN DYKE S 
 BEST STORY 
 
 207 
 
MISS VAN DYKE S BEST STORY. 
 
 WHEN Miss Van Dyke joined the 
 staff of the " Evening Globe," the 
 men of that small but ably conducted sheet 
 bestowed on her a due amount of critical ob 
 servation. After cursory but thorough con 
 sideration of her appearance and manner, they 
 decided that she u was all right," as Matthews, 
 the political editor, elegantly put it. That 
 important point being settled, they proceeded 
 to waste a great deal of their time at her desk, 
 telling her about their wives or sweethearts and 
 their personal affairs. This retarded her work 
 and annoyed the managing editor ; but it gave 
 her a sweet sense of good-fellowship with 
 her associates, and made her very happy. As 
 she was fully twenty-three, she gave the 
 younger reporters much motherly advice, 
 which they immediately forgot, and assumed 
 the role of sister to several of the older 
 ones. On the very rare occasions when she 
 worked late at the office, one of her fellow- 
 14 209 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 workers escorted her home, or, if this was 
 impossible, the city editor sent a messenger 
 boy with her. She was a small woman, with 
 appealing blue eyes and the usual journalistic 
 assortment of nerves. They felt it was quite 
 out of the question for her to be on the 
 streets at night alone, in which opinion 
 Miss Van Dyke concurred. 
 
 She did not say much about herself, having 
 discovered at an early period of her news 
 paper experience that the interest her good 
 comrades felt in the conversation lagged as 
 soon as they ceased to do the talking. Never 
 theless, on several occasions she had managed 
 to inject into the train of reminiscences a few 
 of her own, and one of these had made the 
 rounds of the office and was generally re 
 garded as very touching. 
 
 "When I left the convent," said Miss 
 Van Dyke, in telling the story to her ardent 
 champion, Matthews, " the nuns knew that I 
 had decided to go into journalism. One of 
 them, Sister Clare, was very fond of me, as 
 I was of her. The day I was graduated, she 
 took me into the convent garden for a little 
 farewell advice. It was all very good, and I 
 210 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 was very much touched especially by her 
 last words. I shall never forget them. As 
 she kissed me good-by, she held me in her 
 arms an instant, and said : Farewell, little 
 one. May angels ever guide your pen ! 
 
 u I think of it so often," added Miss Van 
 Dyke, looking up into the young man s face 
 with childlike eyes dimmed by the recollec 
 tion. " And when I have a story that is at 
 all unpleasant to handle, I keep that advice 
 in mind. It has prevented me from making 
 a great many mistakes, I m sure. One 
 could n t write improper or slangy things 
 with those sweet words in mind." 
 
 The picture appealed to the office taste. 
 It was pleasant to think of little Miss Van 
 Dyke (they always punctiliously gave her the 
 title) "turning out her copy in the shadow 
 of an angel s wing," as the sporting editor 
 remarked. That youth was so deeply af 
 fected by the charm of the incident that he 
 once referred to it with almost lachrymose 
 feeling, after a very late supper, and actually 
 came to blows with some one who laughed 
 at him. He got a black eye for his pains. 
 Miss Van Dyke saw the bruise the next 
 211 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 morning when he came to the office. There 
 was, in fact, little that her sharply observing 
 blue eyes did not see, but she never heard 
 the story of its origin. She continued to 
 turn out innocuous copy, and to suggest, by 
 request, appropriate birthday and Christmas 
 presents for the wives of her friends. 
 She also listened earnestly to the recital 
 of long conversations that had taken place 
 between reporters and the young women 
 with whom they were in love. Miss Van 
 Dyke interpreted to the reporters what the 
 young women might have meant by certain 
 remarks, and as her sweet good-nature un 
 consciously made these interpretations bear a 
 somewhat flattering air, her popularity grew 
 apace. Even the office boys heeded her mild 
 requests, and the managing editor went the 
 length of remarking that she was a hard 
 working, level-headed little woman. 
 
 A few days after this momentous dictum, 
 the managing editor accepted a suggestion 
 from his chief to retire from the manage 
 ment of the " Evening Globe." His suc 
 cessor came into the office unhampered by 
 any knowledge of the members of the staff. 
 212 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 He gave out an oracular utterance to the 
 effect that he was after " hot stuff " for the 
 paper, and consequently the reporters, wish 
 ing to retain their official heads, bestirred 
 themselves to give him what he wanted. 
 
 He was a young man of intense and fever 
 ish activity, and the repose of Miss Van 
 Dyke s manner did not appeal to him. So, 
 too, her correct and colorless little stones, 
 perhaps because constructed in the cool 
 shadow of the angel s wings, struck him as 
 having no " go ! " Being a young man of 
 frank nature, he did not take the trouble to 
 conceal his impression, and Miss Van Dyke 
 awoke to the painful consciousness that she 
 was disapproved of by the new editor. 
 
 She was thinking of this as she stood at a 
 window in the editorial rooms about half-past 
 six o clock on the afternoon of election day. 
 There rose to her ears, from tc Newspaper 
 Row," the din of tin horns, fervently tooted 
 by enthusiastic Tammanyites, who saw the 
 approaching end of the so-called " reform 
 administration." Even at this early hour it 
 was admitted that Tammany had carried 
 Greater New York by a sweeping plurality. 
 213 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 The frantic shouts of loyal adherents of the 
 Wigwam came to her from City Hall Park, 
 where the crowd was watching the bulletins 
 in front of the great newspaper offices for 
 the returns. The entire staff of the " Even 
 ing Globe " was still on duty, its members 
 toiling in the city room with tense nerves and 
 haggard faces. From the basement came 
 the thunder of the presses as they ground 
 out the extras containing the latest news. 
 
 Miss Van Dyke knew that with the single 
 exception of herself every woman on the 
 paper was hard at work. The reflection was 
 not a pleasant one. She brooded over it as 
 her sorrowful eyes looked at the surging 
 throng below her. While she gazed ab 
 stractedly at it a great roar came from the 
 packed mass of humanity across the street. 
 Another district had sent in returns for Tam 
 many. The ringing cheer swept through the 
 crowds in Park Row and across City Hall 
 Park, to be taken up by other throats and 
 sent in waves of sound up Broadway. 
 
 Well, well, well, 
 Reform has gone to Hell," 
 
 214 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 rang in her ears from the hoarsely shrieking 
 throats of thousands of excited men. Miss 
 Van Dyke turned from the window with a 
 shocked expression. 
 
 Matthews brushed past her, his hat on the 
 back of his head, his tie under his ear, his 
 expression eloquent of disgust. He had not 
 a word or glance for her he who was usu 
 ally her most loyal and devoted slave, and 
 who had assured her that he should always 
 continue to be at least this, as she would 
 make him nothing more. 
 
 " A landslide for Tammany, is n t it ? " 
 called one of the artists as Matthews passed 
 his easel. " Everything will be wide-open 
 after this ! Good times coming in the Ten 
 derloin again. Eh, old man ? " 
 
 u Coming," repeated Matthews, with con 
 temptuous scorn. " They ve come. It s 
 broken loose already. The Tenderloin has 
 been celebrating for two hours past. By 
 this time it s a blaze of the old-time 
 glory." 
 
 He strode on, into the managing editor s 
 office. With a sudden impulse Miss Van 
 Dyke followed him. An inspiration had 
 2I 5 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 seized her, and she acted upon it without 
 giving herself time for a second thought. 
 
 Her timid rap on the editor s door was 
 unheard. She pushed it open and entered 
 the " kennel," as the box of a room was 
 irreverently styled by the staff. The tired- 
 looking young man sat at his desk, which 
 was littered with papers, telegrams, and long 
 columns of u returns." He was talking 
 quickly to Matthews when she entered, and 
 both men looked in surprise at the small 
 black figure before them. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," hesitated the girl. 
 " I am sorry to interrupt you, but I have a 
 suggestion for a special which I thought you 
 might like to have me work up." 
 
 The managing editor s lips twitched rather 
 impatiently, but he answered her with the 
 businesslike courtesy he showed to all the 
 women who worked for him. 
 
 " Thank you, Miss Van Dyke," he said, 
 " but we re very busy now. If you don t 
 mind waiting until morning I can give your 
 suggestion more careful consideration." 
 
 ct I m afraid it s something that won t 
 wait," the girl persisted. She flushed a little. 
 216 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 u I want you," she added, " to let me do the 
 Tenderloin to-night to describe its cele 
 bration of Tammany s victory from a wo 
 man s point of view." 
 
 Matthews uttered a startled ejaculation, but 
 neither Miss Van Dyke nor the editor heard 
 it. The latter had turned quickly, a sudden 
 interest in his cool gray eyes. 
 
 " That s good," he said promptly. " Do 
 it by all means. New thing fresh point 
 of view. Write the best story you ever 
 wrote in your life. You ve got a splendid 
 chance to turn in a good piece of work." 
 
 He thought a moment, and added more 
 slowly : u Of course you must have some 
 one with you. I 11 send Henderson along, 
 and you can go from place to place in a 
 carriage. Or perhaps Matthews would like 
 to go," he added, turning to that young man 
 with a sudden twinkle in his eyes, which 
 showed that he had not been so oblivious to 
 the social conditions of the office as he had 
 seemed. 
 
 At this opening Matthews broke out in 
 vigorous expostulation. 
 
 " She can t go," he said excitedly. " It s 
 217 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 madness. I don t know what you re think 
 ing ofo It s not Miss Van Dyke s kind of 
 a story at all. Why don t you send Miss 
 Masters if you want a Tenderloin special ? " 
 he demanded, forgetting the deference due 
 his superior officer in his agitation. 
 
 The editor considered his objections 
 gravely. 
 
 " That s true, Miss Van Dyke," he said, 
 turning to her with a sudden lapse of interest. 
 " It is n t your kind of a story, you know. 
 Are you quite sure you realize what you re 
 attempting ? " 
 
 " I should like to take the assignment," 
 the newspaper woman returned nervously 
 but firmly. " I think I can give you what 
 you want. At least, I 11 do my best." 
 
 "Well, all right then," said the young 
 man, briskly. He tapped his bell, and told 
 the office boy who responded to get Hen 
 derson and a carriage. When Henderson 
 entered, almost at once, he gave him some 
 concise directions in a low tone. Then he 
 turned again to Miss Van Dyke. 
 
 " I think a couple of hours uptown will be 
 enough," he said kindly. " It won t be a 
 218 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 pleasant experience for you. Then come 
 back to the office and write the story while 
 it is fresh. Turn it in to me when you ve 
 finished it and go home for a good rest. Of 
 course we won t expect you down to-morrow, 
 as we ll have your copy all ready for the 
 first edition in the morning. I Ve told Hen 
 derson to take you to a few places only, but 
 they re typical, and you 11 get the atmosphere. 
 Are you going, Matthews ? " 
 
 With words much too emphatic that youth 
 declared that he was not, and reiterated his 
 reasons, to which the managing editor lent 
 but an indifferent ear. He had turned to his 
 desk and was deep in the election returns 
 again, so that he did not even hear Miss Van 
 Dyke s timid " good-night " as she left his 
 office. He had, in fact, forgotten her and 
 her assignment within five minutes after her 
 departure. This was not the case with the 
 now miserable Matthews. 
 
 When Miss Van Dyke returned to the 
 office at two o clock in the morning she 
 found that young man awaiting her with 
 anguish on his brow. He had confided to 
 all his associates on the " Evening Globe " the 
 219 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 tragedy of the night, to which they listened 
 without much comment. Ordinarily, it 
 would have excited a great deal, but the 
 work on election night was too pressing to 
 permit of idle talk. He turned upon the 
 tired reporter, as she entered, a face on 
 which reproach and scorn were strongly 
 blended. She lifted her hand, and the motion 
 of the delicate fingers silenced the words that 
 rushed to his lips. 
 
 " If you say one word to me," she as 
 serted, " I shall cry." There was a treacher 
 ous break in her voice, though she had tried 
 to make the words light. " I m worn out," 
 she continued, "and I have my story to 
 write before I can go home. I know every 
 thing you want to say. It will be a waste of 
 time to go over it. I want to be left in 
 peace to do my work." 
 
 He opened his lips to speak, despite her 
 protest. 
 
 " If you have any friendliness at all for 
 me," she begged, " go away and leave me 
 alone." And with a lowering brow he 
 went. 
 
 Miss Van Dyke wrote her story, putting 
 220 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 into it the best work of which she was capa 
 ble. The wild scenes of the night were like 
 a horrible dream in their effect on the quiet 
 little woman who had gone to them still full 
 of memories of convent gardens, and dimly 
 lighted chapels where black-robed nuns 
 prayed silently. She described them vividly 
 and strongly, setting them down as she had 
 seen them, not wholly understanding what 
 she wrote, but giving to the public a story 
 whose realism haunted many a man and 
 woman who read it the next day. It was 
 the report of innocence on vice, made with 
 the fidelity with which a little child tells of 
 some horror that it does not comprehend, 
 and for that very reason describes the more 
 effectively. Miss Van Dyke finished her 
 story as dawn was breaking. Then she 
 went alone through the gray streets, past 
 dimly burning lamps, to the elevated train 
 which carried her to a station near her up 
 town boarding-house. There had been no 
 arrangement made by the office for her safe 
 conduct on this occasion. It had been taken 
 for granted that a young woman who had 
 done an election night special, describing the 
 221 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 gayest scenes in gay New York, could after 
 wards make her way home alone. 
 
 She did not come to the office at all the 
 next day. It was well that she did not, for 
 the larger part of the day was given to the 
 discussion and mental digestion of u Little 
 Van Dyke s story." For the first time the 
 members of the staff did not trouble them 
 selves to say " Miss " Van Dyke, which 
 they had been so careful to do before. The 
 quiet little woman and her story were the 
 talk of the office, and the comments upon 
 both made Matthews set his teeth. Hen 
 derson epitomized the general feeling by his 
 one remark at the end of a spirited debate as 
 to how much she understood of what she 
 had written. 
 
 " Anyhow," he said, with somewhat feel 
 ing sarcasm, " the angel was certainly off 
 duty, temporarily ; " and during the yell 
 of laughter that followed, Matthews was 
 conscious of a lust for Henderson s blood 
 that alarmed him by its intensity. Later in the 
 day, he overheard further remarks suggesting 
 the general view of Miss Van Dyke s story. 
 
 " It s a corker," said the managing editor, 
 222 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 with generous enthusiasm. " One of the 
 best things of the kind I ever read. I might 
 have known she had it in her. That quiet, 
 shrinking type of woman always has." 
 
 u What a stunning bluff she put up on 
 us ! " laughed another man. u She took us 
 all in every one of us with her convent 
 manner and her nursery eyes. I thought she 
 was fresh from vernal fields, but I guess she 
 knows a few things." Matthews, listening 
 to it all, wondered if he were becoming the 
 victim of homicidal mania, since there seemed 
 no other explanation for his feverish longing 
 for the gore of these friends of his. 
 
 " Let s make her feel at home when she 
 drops in," suggested the bright young woman 
 who did sensational stories for the " Evening 
 Globe." She wore blonde hair and much red 
 paint, and she had always resented keenly the 
 deep respect shown by the staff to Miss Van 
 Dyke. The Tenderloin story was one she 
 would have been glad to write if she had 
 thought of it. Not having done so, she was 
 pleased by the sentiment concerning Miss 
 Van Dyke which that young person s story 
 had called forth so freely. 
 223 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 "This will do it," she added jocosely, as 
 she produced a large placard and nailed it 
 above Miss Van Dyke s desk. It bore what 
 the bright young woman called a sentiment 
 appropriate to the occasion. u Welcome to 
 Little Van Dyke," it read, in large black let 
 ters, "the Tenderfoot of the Tenderloin." 
 When the brilliant originator of this heard 
 the laughter that greeted its appearance, she 
 realized that success had crowned her sisterly 
 efforts. 
 
 " Little Van Dyke " arrived at the office 
 at eight o clock the next morning, and mar 
 velled at the silence that fell over the city 
 room as she came in. The heads that usu 
 ally rose to greet her remained bent over their 
 desks. Her friends and she had many 
 were bitterly chagrined by the step she had so 
 innocently taken. Her enemies and she 
 had a few exulted openly over it. Never 
 theless, everybody waited for some one else to 
 utter one of the pleasantries all knew were 
 coming. The force of habit was strong, 
 and despite themselves the staff shrank from 
 speaking to this convent girl as they would 
 have spoken to Miss Masters. As she ap- 
 224 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 preached her desk, Miss Van Dyke saw the 
 placard hung on the wall. On her table 
 were bottles, glasses, cigarette stumps, and 
 other reminders of her recent experience. 
 They watched her look at these, and then 
 brush them aside, her pale cheeks flushing as 
 she caught the implication. They noticed 
 her slight figure straighten as she read the 
 lurid sentiment on the wall. Then she tore 
 it down and dropped it into her waste-paper 
 basket, brushing the debris from her desk 
 into the same receptacle as she took her seat. 
 Several of the men who liked her, and who 
 had - thought that a little experience of the 
 kind she was having might do her good, now 
 felt that the matter had gone far enough, and 
 rose to speak to her. They were interrupted 
 by conversational pleasantries bearing on the 
 case from some of the younger men scattered 
 about the room. One of these, a youth to 
 whom Miss Van Dyke had always objected, 
 and whom she had rather pointedly avoided, 
 sauntered up to her now with a lounging 
 familiarity that made the blood of her cham 
 pions boil. 
 
 " Why did n t you take me with you last 
 15 225 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 night ? " he asked in an easy, off-hand way. 
 u I should have enjoyed it first rate, and you 
 could have shown me a new phase of life." 
 
 The others followed his lead, not from 
 cruelty, but because the situation appealed to 
 their peculiar sense of humor. 
 
 "Well, we ve got almost as much of it as 
 if we had gone," said one, comfortingly. 
 "Miss Van Dyke s story conducted us all 
 through the gilded haunts of the Tenderloin. 
 She exhausted the subject, I tell you," the 
 speaker laughed. 
 
 One of the girl s friends swore softly at 
 this and she heard him. He would not have 
 sworn in her presence last week, she thought. 
 He seized his hat and left the room precipi 
 tately, missing the explanation which she 
 now made to the assembled company. 
 
 " I can t understand your attitude this 
 morning," she said with a dignified warmth. 
 " I went on that assignment because it 
 seemed to me a chance for good work. The 
 managing editor liked the suggestion and told 
 me to carry it out. I wrote a faithful report 
 of what I saw, and that is all there is to it." 
 
 They listened quietly, with the mental 
 226 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 reservations of those who knew more about 
 the subject than the speaker did. Wheeler, 
 one of her friends, came to her a little later. 
 
 " I could have told you, little girl," he 
 said very gently, "what a serious blunder 
 you were making. If I had been here I 
 would most certainly have warned you that 
 night. But I knew nothing about it until 
 I came yesterday morning and found the 
 office teeming with the story. It was a hor 
 rible mistake for you to make. It s an as 
 signment no woman should have taken, and 
 no good woman would have dreamed of 
 attempting it if she had realized what she 
 was doing," he added hastily, as the girl paled 
 under the words. u I m afraid it will take 
 you months to live it down." 
 
 Absurd as the words sounded, Miss Van 
 Dyke found them very true. As the weeks 
 passed she tried to slip back into her quiet 
 little niche on the paper, but they would not 
 have it so. Even the managing editor un 
 consciously added his share to her weight of 
 woe. He had highly approved her Tender 
 loin story, and now, from day to day, he gave 
 her others along similar lines. 
 227 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 " Give us something as good as that 
 Tenderloin special, Miss Van Dyke," he 
 would say, in open self-gratulation that she 
 had emerged from beneath the angel s wing. 
 At each repetition of the words the girl s 
 heart grew heavier. 
 
 She wrote the stories with photographic 
 accuracy, and they were satisfactory, although 
 no other ever contained the brilliant work of 
 that fatal night. She never became recon 
 ciled to the fact that the men now treated 
 her as one of themselves, with a good-natured 
 camaraderie^ in which, however, the deference 
 of the old days was wholly lacking. She 
 knew that they called her " Little Van 
 Dyke " and that " The Tenderfoot of the 
 Tenderloin " still clung to her as a sobriquet. 
 Also that there was no further reference to 
 the angel that guided her pen. The manag 
 ing editor s approval and the off-hand kindli 
 ness of her associates did not repay her for 
 this lack, which she felt in every fibre of her 
 sensitive nature. 
 
 Even the devoted Matthews was changed. 
 He was as respectful, as deferential, as in the 
 old days even more so, as if he wished to 
 228 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 make up, by his personal efforts, for the 
 change in the office atmosphere. But he 
 was irritable and moody and wholly unhappy, 
 and each new assignment given to the " Little 
 Tenderfoot " wrung his manly soul. Very 
 early in their acquaintance he had laid his 
 heart and hand at her feet, and she had de 
 clined both with gentle firmness and womanly 
 appreciation of the honor he had offered her. 
 He had never mentioned the matter again, 
 but she had felt, until that eventful night, 
 that he remained unchanged. 
 
 She was thinking it all over one afternoon, 
 as he came to her desk in the city room. 
 
 " How much longer are you going to en 
 dure this ? " he asked brusquely. " Do you 
 realize that you re taking rank on the paper 
 with Miss Masters, who smokes and drinks, 
 and is regarded as c a good fellow by the 
 boys ? Don t you see that your assignments 
 are getting more and more objectionable all 
 the time ? Why don t you chuck it all ? " 
 
 Miss Van Dyke turned her head wearily. 
 
 " How can I ? " she asked dismally. I Ve 
 
 got to make a living somehow. The way 
 
 the men treat me is bad enough, but there s 
 
 229 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 another thing that s worse. I m in the posi 
 tion of the author of The Deceased Wife s 
 Sister. Everything I write is compared with 
 that wretched Tenderloin story and found 
 wanting. Give us another as good as that, 
 the editors say, and when I turn in the copy 
 they look it over and grumble, Well, this 
 is pretty good, but it is n t a patch on your 
 election night special. It s just as Mr. 
 Wheeler said the next day. I shall never 
 live it down, and yet I m chained here, and 
 there s no chance of my getting away." 
 
 The tears filled her eyes as she spoke. 
 She openly wiped them away, glad that no 
 one saw them but this loyal friend, who had 
 been so faithful. 
 
 Matthews seized his opportunity, clever 
 man that he was. 
 
 " Let me give you an assignment," he said 
 earnestly. He leaned over her desk and took 
 from her little hand the pen with which she 
 had been drawing erratic designs on her desk 
 blotter as she spoke. 
 
 "Drop this," he said urgently, his dark 
 face flushed with earnestness. " Drop it for 
 all time and come to me. Let me take care 
 230 
 
Miss Van Dyke s Best Story 
 
 of you forever. Surely there is nothing finer 
 in being a self-supporting woman than in 
 marrying a poor human being like me and 
 making him happy." 
 
 Miss Van Dyke looked into his dark eyes, 
 her own falling beneath their expression of 
 love and longing. In a sudden mental illu 
 mination she realized why it had been so 
 hard for her to bear her little trials of the 
 past two months under their critical but 
 loving gaze. He had been so fine through 
 it all. He had suffered for her and with her, 
 and it had been unnecessary pain for she 
 knew now that she had loved him all along. 
 
 His stalwart form was between her and 
 the desks near hers. It would be a human 
 bulwark between her and the world, as long 
 as it had life and strength, she knew. The 
 career on which she had entered so happily 
 seemed to have passed beyond her control. 
 Others were shaping it to her undoing. 
 After all, a woman s place is in a home ! She 
 put her hand on the brown ones lying near 
 her, which promptly caught and held it fast. 
 A careful inspection out of the corner of his 
 eye showed Matthews that Henderson was 
 231 
 
Tales of the City Room 
 
 watching the little scene with polite interest. 
 He had to content himself with a very tender 
 pressure of the hand he held in his own. 
 
 "I I think I 11 take the assignment," 
 Miss Van Dyke whispered shyly. 
 
 For the first time since Tammany s return 
 to power, the cloud lifted from the brow of 
 Matthews. 
 
 232 
 
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