Elizabeth Garver Jordan

“ It seemed impossible that women experienced enough to do this with dignity and courage should sit around to-night, all unheeding, and let such things go on. Then looking at them again, table by table, I read the answer. They were themselves the lost and strayed—callous, indifferent, with faces and hearts hardened by the lives they had led. I began to feel sick and faint, and for a moment I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, coming toward us slowly through the crowd was Godfrey Morris, the assistant of Nestor Hurd, my chief on the Searchlight. ”

“ Hoppen, a woman reporter on the Searchlight, came and spoke to me about them. She was forty and slender and black-eyed, and her work was as clever as any man's, but it seemed to have made her very hard. She seemed to believe in no one. She made me feel as if she had dived so deep in life that she had come out into a place where there wasn't anything. She came to me one day when Yawkins was coiled over my desk. ”

“ For three hours he had raced up and down the aisles of the theater, alternately yelping commands and taking flying leaps across the footlights to the stage to go through a scene himself. He had laughed, he had wept, he had pleaded, he had sworn, he had cooed, he had roared. He had been strangely gentle with the white-haired old man of the company, and wholly brutal to a young girl who was doing beautiful work. He had reduced every woman to tears and every man to smothered and stuttering profanity. ”

“ Between the two was a spot as out of place in those surroundings as a flower-bed would seem on the stern brow of an Alpine glacier.
Mrs. Brandow, the newspapers had told the world, was not only a beautiful woman, but a woman who loved beauty. She had spent six months in Fairview awaiting her trial. All the members of the "good family" Mr. Hurd had mentioned had died young—probably as a reward of their excellence. She had no intimate friends—her husband, it was said, had made friendships impossible for her. ”

“ Together we went out into the gray morning light, and I stood on the curb, full-lunged, ecstatic, until Gibson and the taxi-cab appeared. He helped me into the cab and took the seat beside me.
"You ought to go home," I murmured, with sudden compunction. "You must be horribly tired."
They were my first words. I had made no comment on the message he brought, and it was clear that he had expected none. Now he smiled at me—the wide, kind, understanding smile that had warmed the five years of our friendship. ”

“ I repeated. "And I let her—"
"Fine-kine-rady," murmured the child, drowsily, as if hearing and responding to a cue. She was quiet and well content, again playing with a coat-button; but she piped out her three words as if they were part of a daily drill and the word of command had been uttered. Casey and I looked at each other, then dropped our eyes.
"D'ye Know the Woman?" He Said
"Find kind lady," I translated at last. Then I broke down, in the bitterest storm of tears that I have ever known. Beside me Casey stood guard, silent and unhappy. ”

“ Far down within me something sighed over the loss of that love scene—sighed, and then moaned over the loss of something else. "T. B.," his chin on his chest, his eyes on the floor, brooded somberly in an orchestra seat until we were ready to go over the revised scene. As I finished, Stella Merrick leaned over me, her hand clutching my left shoulder in a grip that hurt. Her teeth were chattering with nervousness.
"How can you be so calm?" she gasped. "I've never seen him as devilish as he is to-night. If you hadn't kept your nerve we'd all have gone to smash. ”

“ Her peroration filled the little room, and like a swelling organ tone rolled through the open door and down the stairs, where it reached the far recesses of the hall below. Her lean right arm shot upward in her one characteristic gesture, as if she called on high Heaven itself to bear witness to the wisdom of her words in this, her last official utterance.
"Woman's place," ended Tildy Mears, "is in the home!" ”

“ As if the remark had been a gauntlet tossed on the table in challenge, my companions fell upon it. Every one talked at once, the Best Seller and the Author upholding the opinion of the woman with the blue eyes, the rest disputing it, until the Playwright checked the discussion with a remark that caught the attention of all.
"There's nothing new in this world," she said, "and therefore there's nothing interesting. We all know too much. The only interesting things are those we can't understand, because they happen—elsewhere." ”

“ Next to failures, our chief disliked explanations. "A dead man doesn't care a hang what killed him," was his terse summing up of their futility.
He was shouting an impassioned monologue into the telephone when I reached his side, and as a final exclamation-point he hurled the receiver down on his desk, upsetting a bottle of ink. I waited in silence while he exhausted the richest treasures of his vocabulary and soaked up the ink with blotters. It was a moment for feminine tact, and I exercised it, though I was no longer in awe of Mr. Hurd. ”

“ However, there was no sense in waiting round the office any longer, so I put on my hat and left the Searchlight building, walking across City Hall Park to Broadway, where I took an open car up-town. I was getting used to being out alone late at night; but I had not ceased to feel an exultant thrill whenever I realized that I, May Iverson, just out of the convent and only eighteen, was actually part of the night life of great, wonderful, mysterious New York. Almost every man and woman I saw interested me because of the story I knew was hidden in each human heart ”

“ More entertainers came into the space shut off by the red cords. Every moment the room grew closer and hotter, the smoke around us became thicker, the atmosphere of excitement increased. The faces of Kittie and Maudie began to float before me in a kind of mist. I decided that if I ever got them out into a clean world again I would have nothing left to pray for. But I knew I could not wipe the evening and its incidents from their memories, and that knowledge was the hardest thing I had to bear.
In desperation I turned from the dancers and began to watch the diners. ”

“ I smiled at Mollie Clark and told her to tell me all about herself—the whole story of her life, so that I could use as much or as little of it as I wanted to. Of course, she did not know how to begin. People never do. She rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, which seemed to be her favorite attitude, and sat quite still, thinking. To help her I asked a few questions. That started her, and at last she grew interested and more at ease and began to talk. ”

“ It was a tradition in Park Row that no human being save himself had ever built a newspaper head which satisfied our editor-in-chief, and his nightly explosions of rage over those on the proofs that came to his desk jarred even the firm walls of the Searchlight building. ”

“ In another moment I was in the elevator and on my way to the tenth floor, on which, as I had learned, each independent member of the Morris family occupied a separate apartment, though the suites of Mrs. Morris and her daughter had a connecting door. The tag on Miss Morris's key gave me the number of her suite, and I found her door without difficulty. My fingers shook with nervousness as I inserted the key in the lock. I felt like a housebreaker, and probably looked like one, as I glanced anxiously over my shoulder and up and down the long hall, which, fortunately, was empty. ”

“ And now the second act was on, with the rollicking comedy of which I felt so sure. Around us the audience rocked and laughed, breaking out frequently into little whirlwinds of applause. The strain of rehearsals had had its effect on my feeling for various members of the company, but to-night as I watched them it seemed to me that I loved them all, for beyond doubt each was giving all that was in him toward the winning of the success that now seemed assured.
"Your hand is cold even through your glove," 273 whispered Godfrey. "That's the only sign you show of nervousness." ”

“ The great car sped on again, through a fog that, thin at first, finally pressed against us like a moist gray net. Though we could see hardly a dozen yards ahead of us, Dillon did not slacken his alarming speed. From time to time we knew, by the wan glimmer of street lamps through the mist, that we were sweeping through some town. Gradually the roads grew rougher. Occasionally we made sharp turns, Dillon stopping often to consult with Miss Morris, who at first had seemed to know the way, but who now made suggestions with growing uncertainty. ”

“ He must have caught Maudie's eye, for suddenly he crossed to our table and began to play to her—turning occasionally to Kittie and me for a second only, while his violin shrieked and moaned and sighed and sang in a way that made our hearts turn over. I could see by their faces, which were pink with excitement, and by their shining eyes, what emotions the moment held for my young friends, and certainly it was thrilling enough for three girls 80 just out of school to have a genius playing to them alone in one of the gayest restaurants in New York. ”

“ His eyes seemed like those of Yawkins and the great snake in my dreams, but as I looked into them they fell.
"For God's sake, child," he said, irritably, "don't look at me as if I were an anaconda! Don't you know it was all a trick?" He came up closer to me and gave me his next words eye to eye and very slowly, as if to force me to listen and believe.
"I did that, Miss Iverson," he said, "to show you what happens to beautiful girls in New York when they go into men's offices asking for advice about money. Some one had to do it. ”

“ The theater filled with strange sounds—the wail of a banshee, the yelps of a suffering dog, a series of shrieks like the danger-blasts of a locomotive whistle. Something in me lent an ear to them and 245 wondered what they meant. Surely they could not mean that my heroine was to have an attack of hysteria at that moment in my play. That was all wrong—wholly outside of the character and the scene; enough, indeed, to kill the comedy, to turn it into farce. ”

“ In another moment the car leaped forward, turned a corner at an appallingly sharp angle, and went racing along a dark side-street at a speed that made the lamp-posts slip by us like wraiths. The wind sang past our ears. Miss Morris put her lips close to my face and laughed exultantly.
"You're going, after all, you see," she triumphed. "Herbert and I aren't easy to stop when we've set our hearts on anything. Here—what are you doing? Don't be an idiot!" ”

“ You have held down your claims through the endless months of Western winters, while your men were away; you have toiled with them in the fields; you have endured with them the tragedies of cyclones, of droughts, of sickness, of starvation. If woman's work is in the home alone, as our opponents say it is, you have been most unwomanly. For you have remained in the home only long enough to bear your children, to care for them, to feed them and your husbands. The rest of the time you have done a man's work in the West. ”

“ At the right of this cedar was an almost hidden trail, which, followed for twenty 122 minutes, would lead me to the Moran cabin. I was not to be alarmed if a bullet whispered its sinister message in my ear. To kill women was no part of the Moran traditions, and a fatality to me would be a regrettable incident, due wholly, if it occurred at all, to the impulsive nature of Samuel Tyrrell, who had formed the careless habit of firing at moving objects without pausing to discover what they were. ”

“ Almost every one prominent in New York drops into this place at one time or another. Many worthy citizens come regularly. It's quite the thing, though dull!"
"I know," I stammered. "I know." I did know, but I was humiliated to the soul. "Please don't say any more."
It is true that I form impressions quickly. It is also true that I can change them just as quickly when I am shown that I am wrong. Mr. Morris looked at my face, from which the blood now seemed to be bursting, and took pity on me. ”

“ Other figures—I did not know how many—had entered the dark theater and taken their places around me. From where I sat, half a dozen rows behind him, I had a view of "T. B.'s" hair under the slouch hat he kept on his head, the bulge of his jaw as he turned his profile toward me, the sharp upward angle of the huge cigar in his mouth. The company were in their places in the wings and on the stage. I heard Elman's quick word, "Curtain." The rehearsal had begun. The familiar words of the opening scene rolled over the footlights as cold and vague as a fog that rolls in from the sea. ”

“ The big, kindly-disposed audience, anxious to be pleased, met every comedy line with a quick response which grew more generous as the moments passed. The entrance of the star brought an ovation which temporarily checked the progress of the play. Under it Miss Merrick's brilliant eyes lost their look of 271 strain. She touched her highest moments in the pathos of her entrance scene. The audience was again very quiet. Around us handkerchiefs rustled; Godfrey's eyes, meeting mine, were wet, and my heart turned to water as I looked at them. ”

“ She stared at me.
"You won't have much time for sleep," she answered, almost kindly. "It will take you an hour or two to write your story."
It was my turn to stare, and I did it. "My story?" I asked her. "To-night? What do you mean?"
She swung round in her chair and stared at me harder than ever. Then she cackled in her nastiest way. "And this is a New York reporter!" she said. "Why, you little dunce, you know you've got a story, don't you?"
"Yes," I answered, doubtfully. "But I'm to write it to-morrow, after I talk to Mr. Hurd."
Miss Watts uttered a squawk and then a squeal. ”