Chapter IV

From _The Journal_ office the lake looked blue and calm, disdaining the stray gusts of wind that tossed newspapers and rubbish about in the alleys below Main Street. Horatia had moved her typewriter over to the window so typewriting might be accompanied by some compensations. Langley said it increased her mistakes one hundred per cent, but Horatia insisted that it doubled her inspirations.

“Which is necessary,” she added, “when one is trying to be both brilliant and informational. The two things don’t track.”

She hated typewriting. Her fingers, untrained to accuracy, stumbled and missed their aim and wrote absurdities. But typewriting was one of the things which must be done if she was to do journalistic work, they told her, and Horatia had decided that working on a newspaper was worth a good many sacrifices. She had gone through some of them already in the shape of family protests and disapprovals and if another one was to take the shape of a 1913 Oliver typewriter, that too was to be borne. Gladly borne for the sake of the thrilling contact with unprinted, raw news, with information on a hundred subjects that had never interested her before, for the sake of the kaleidoscopic picture of the city’s life and means of life, for the caustic brilliant comments of Jim Langley and Bob Brotherton, sitting with their pipes smoking furiously as they uncoiled the truth about some happening, or wrote editorials of things as they ought to be. Out of the terrific tangle of the philosophies and political economies of the world she saw these men draw threads and wind them neatly on a spool of thought. The tangle remained a tangle but a fascinating instead of a discouraging one. It was more what was said than what was written, though enough out of tune with the current hysteric dread of American Bolshevism was published to account for Harvey’s characterization that Langley had “no policy” which meant the fatal lack of the right one. Horatia knew now why Jim Langley’s paper had never appeared in the Grant household. She had seen the president of the Dry-Goods Association of which Uncle George was a pillar denounced in its pages for crooked political dealing. She knew why the advertisements that _The Journal_ ran were those of obscure stores or coöperative establishments or small firms employing union labor. In two months she had learned more about politics, psychology, philosophy and labor problems than she had known there was to learn. Most of it had come direct from Langley. He had looked a little surprised when she had turned up that Monday morning, whimsically surprised.

“So you came?” he said simply with a thousand implications in his tone.

And she had answered, “I came,” giving therewith the answer to all his implied questionings in her tone. He gave her a desk and told her briefly, almost abruptly, what he thought she could do. She could “cover” certain meetings for them, mostly big lectures and concerts that must be reported, with such theater notices as would be necessary and for the rest, it would be mostly writing up the notes of Bob Brotherton, or Charley Jones, the other reporter, when their work crowded them too much.

“You see,” he explained, “you take no one’s place but you can relieve the pressure on all of us.”

That was the outline of her work but compressed in the outline she found ten and sometimes twelve hours a day of fascination. The two other men had taken her advent rather smilingly but they soon found her useful. She learned to read their handwriting, to decipher their notes, to write a story from their verbal outline. And “in spite of her typewriting,” said Langley, “it is good copy.”

Little by little she had come into the confidences of the office. The men talked freely in front of her, tried to show her how to typewrite, explained their standards, told of their own histories and ambitions. Bob Brotherton had meant to write and was particularly expansive about his wasted ambition when he had been drinking a little. Horatia came to recognize the effect of liquor in his conversation and to discount it. She liked him too because Langley had told her something of Bob’s miseries, his domestic tragedy of an insane wife and a feeble-minded child, both now in institutions somewhere. And it was impossible to keep from liking Charley Jones, out of college three years and hoping, praying and urging that Labor would come into its own soon. All the problems of the city and of the country, even of the world, were met in the little office by Bob’s literary pessimism, Charley’s cure-all and the philosophical endurance of Langley. Langley never got angry or excited. When the others were tangled as to policy or inner meanings, he hit the truth on the head with some single sentence. Horatia, sitting at her typewriter or at her table with her back to them all, would catch herself listening for his comment and when it came would seize upon it as truth and final.

She had no idea of how much she had changed the office, of how much more work and less idling had come with her. Perhaps because her dogged determined industry made them ashamed, perhaps because her uplifted profile at the window or her apologetic frowning smile at some mistake she had made charmed them, they all worked with a new energy. And they were all amazed at her lack of self-consciousness. They were experienced, each in his own way, and they watched her for those traces of self-consciousness which break down the barriers between business and personal relations. But there was none of it. She never blushed, she never seemed afraid. It was all interest--pure interest.

“I can’t get it,” said Bob one day after she had left the office. “She likes it here. What does she see in this decrepit sheet to interest her? She ought to be listening to troubadours under her window, instead of pounding a typewriter.”

“Precisely,” said Langley, a little over-dryly. “She ought, but she wouldn’t. She’s gone on a hunt for her own romance--that’s what the modern young girl does instead of having it brought to her.”

“And she’s found it here?” grinned Bob.

Langley shrugged his shoulders and tilted his pipe.

“Temporarily. The view helps.”

He sent Bob out on an assignment shortly after and then stood before the window watching the darkness close down on the water.

There was no doubt that _The Journal’s_ affairs were looking up. A new movement had come into the city--a non-partisan political element who in default of a paper of their own were using his. They were backing a strong man and a comparatively decent one for mayor in the November elections and political advertising had swelled the funds of _The Journal_ as much as its advocacy of a strong candidate had increased its circulation. And Langley found his old nerve coming back into his writing. He admitted occasionally to some of his companions that it was worth while writing if someone was reading what he wrote. But there seemed to be other things that stimulated his thought. He had a way of watching Horatia’s profile, clear and pure against the window, of drinking in the frank admiration in her tone and her face as she talked to him, the sweetness of her impersonality--those things were getting into his writing too. But he never admitted that. So on this October day when Horatia sat struggling with her typewriter, he acted quite as if he was oblivious to her presence.

She rose at last and brought her copy to him and he groaned as usual at the misplaced letters and figures.

“But read it,” said Horatia gaily. “It’s a description of the mass meeting the women got up for our candidate which mentions the name of every lady present who can afford to subscribe to the paper. I’m getting on to the game. And please don’t give me any more to do this afternoon because I want to go.”

“Nice businesslike attitude,” said the editor.

“Everything’s done,” said Horatia, defensively.

“All right.”

“I’ll tell you what I want to do,” volunteered Horatia.

Langley had permitted himself no inquisitiveness but he seemed glad and composed himself to listen.

“My revered uncle and aunt feel so nieceless since I work all day and sleep all the time that I’m home that they have decided to do a very wonderful thing. They are going to Florida for the rest of the winter to look at beauties which they are getting too old to appreciate. And as it seemed useless to keep the stone house open for me, I am told to go to live with Maud. I don’t want to live with Maud, however, and, truth to tell, I don’t think Maud, though she won’t admit it, wants me to very much. I’m not much help to her and I rile her pool of life. She has admitted that if I could get a ‘cunning little apartment and some girl to live with me,’ I might be more content. And so I have found a cunning little apartment and the friend dropped from heaven to live with me. She is the new woman in the government labor office, Grace Walsh. I heard about her--she was five or six years ahead of me at the University--and I went to see her and she’s very keen about it, living with me, I mean.”

“Where is the cunning place?”

“On Sixth Street. New apartment building. I’m going to meet Grace there now and when we get the pictures hung, you can drop your editorial mantle and come to call.”

Langley flushed a little. It was a long time since he had had such light-hearted invitations flung at him--or so it must have seemed to him. And, vaguely understanding the flush, Horatia was suddenly enraged at the ostracism which had been forced upon him.

“Won’t you walk over and see the place now with me?” she said, impulsively. “It isn’t half a mile.”

She expected him to refuse her. He had not repeated his invitation to lunch since she had been in the office and, courteous as he always was, Horatia fancied that he avoided personal contact with her when he could. But now, to her surprise, he rose.

“I’d like to. I’ve been wanting a walk all day.”

They swung along briskly and this time the sardonic Langley seemed left behind in the office. The new one laughed like a boy and walked as if all the rigidity had melted out of his body. On the street, as they passed people whom he or Horatia knew, his hat was off almost with a flourish as if he greeted the world afresh.

“You act as if you’d dropped all the cares of the world,” laughed Horatia.

“No--I’m still carrying them. But it isn’t the cares of the world that weigh you down. It’s your own little cares. If you have none of those and no ugly scars left by them you can carry the troubles of the world easily enough. What an easy problem to solve Bolshevism is, if you aren’t trying to solve it with a mind diseased by personal aches and worries.”

Horatia did not answer. She hoped he would go on into fuller, more specific confidence. She hated herself for the question that so often cropped up in her mind as to what were the real facts of the Hubbell trouble. She understood so much of him now that she wanted to know about that. It would be the last link in the chain--no, the last step in the ladder that mounted--whither she did not know. Somewhere in her vaguest thoughts she and Jim Langley understood each other perfectly, scoffed at the rest of the world that did not understand.

But he did not go on. They reached the apartment building, and Horatia, pulling out her latch-key long before it was necessary, rang for the elevator.

“Your friend is there?” asked Langley, suddenly, sharply.

This time it was Horatia’s turn to flush. She dropped from the clouds.

“Of course,” she said, impatiently. “But I like to use my latch-key.”

She rapped on the door where a card already announced the names of Miss Walsh and Miss Grant. There was no answer and she unlocked the door and pushed it open. A note lay on the little table in the hall. Horatia picked it up and read it. Then she turned to Langley with her head a little higher than usual.

“Grace had to go downtown for some things. She’ll be back later. You can come in anyway, can’t you, and let me show you the place?”

His eyes met hers squarely.

“It’s better not,” he said, quietly.

They stood confronting the silly, awkward little situation with varying emotions. His rage at the fact that he couldn’t be natural for fear of compromising her--that he had to protect her not from himself but from his reputation, was natural enough. And Horatia raged because she did not know that she dared urge him, and she wanted to.

“It’s absurd,” she cried impatiently. “It’s stupid. It’s beastly. You’ve been abominably treated. Do you think I care what people say?”

His eyes seemed to melt at the championing kindness of her tone--then froze again.

“The oppressed always appeal to the romantic. But you want to make sure of the merits of the oppressed. Some other time, Miss Grant. I enjoyed my walk.”

He was gone immediately and Horatia flung furniture and rugs into place until her anger was cooled. Grace came in half an hour later to find things in amazing order.

“You’ve done everything.”

“I wanted to work,” answered Horatia, briefly.

And then----

“Look here, do I have to have a chaperon every time I want a man to come up here? Do you?”

Grace pulled off her gloves, sat down on the sofa and surveyed the room and the question calmly. She was a calm person, who balanced an unshocked acceptance of any laxity or scandal in the world of literature against an equally uncomplaining acceptance of the restraints of the world of action. And she seemed fond of Horatia, though Horatia had a feeling of getting acquainted only up to a certain point.

“I suppose not,” Grace said slowly. “People may be a little vicious in their talk if you’re not somewhat circumspect. I wouldn’t advise sessions with married men--or ones with highly colored reputations----”

“What does it matter what people say?” urged Horatia.

“Oh, it doesn’t--and it does. I think it would to you. But the question of having men here alone isn’t likely to arise. For the kind of men you’d want wouldn’t come if they thought your reputation would be endangered. There are a few survivals of romance, and the knightly spirit, and one of the last to go, if it ever goes, will be the care that men take of women’s names. It’s my experience that names rank more highly than bodies in male psychology.”

There was no sign of any remembrance of the episode in Langley’s manner the next day and Horatia found no difference in his attitude towards her. She never saw him outside the office. The curtains were hung in the little apartment. Grace sat up an informal tea-table at which Horatia assisted. Even Maud came occasionally with some of her friends to savor this bachelor life, and they pretended to envy for half an hour. It was a very pleasant apartment and Horatia found that being an intellectual in the city was far different from being an intellectual in the confines of West Park or a highbrow at the University. Not all men were afraid of brains. Charley Jones came and brought young men with him, several friends of Harvey’s came and there were others justifying themselves by this claim or that to a seat near that tea-table where Grace Walsh, looking like a Dutch picture, poured out tea and calm cynical judgments and Horatia, in a yellow silk dress on Sundays and blue serge on weekdays, pressed lemon, cream, tea cakes and joy of living on them.

It was wonderful to see how the excitement of the new life brought a richer color into Horatia’s cheeks and a glow into her eyes which made every gown the most becoming one. It was amazing to see how her power over men grew. She seemed to toss a mental challenge to every man she met, a challenge not to a combat of words or phrases but to a struggle over the interesting and vital things in the world. She was enjoying herself so much that she tempted them all to discover her secret of enjoyment.

But she allowed nothing to interfere with her work and more and more of her time was spent at the office as the fall days grew shorter and the lake more steadily grey and the work heavier. The November election promised to be a most important one in the history of the city. _The Journal’s_ candidate, Nels Johnson, came and went in the office. He was a heavy little man with a kind shrewd face and a tolerant smile. Horatia liked him and she liked to hear him talk and give opinions for publication. Langley liked him too, she knew. She could hear them often through the door of his office discussing things which had nothing to do with the election.

“The Reds are rotten, physically and morally, and they run on a single track mentally, most of them,” Langley would say, “but I’ll be damned if they aren’t much more attractive than the slinking crowd that want to put out all the pipes in the country. I’d sooner have an old-style Tammany man than one of these ministerial sneaks.”

And Bob Brotherton, his nose a little red still and his utterance a trifle thick from indulgence in some private store of liquor to which he seemed to have eternal access, would agree. And the candidate for office would agree. And Charley Jones, with some comment on the attempt of the churches to dominate labor, would agree. And Horatia, vigorously nodding at her typewriter, would agree too that she wanted the world run by freedom and not by imprisonments.

But perhaps the nicest moments and hours for Horatia were the evenings in the office when they all worked late and tobacco and accomplishment were thick in the air. Sometimes the reporters would all be out on some errands and Langley would talk to her--always impersonally, never emotionally, but expansively, going back into the history of the city to explain some political anomaly to her and telling her, in spite of himself, about his ideas and plans. She came to respect him more and more and to believe in the fineness of his instincts. But still she never heard him say a word of his personal affairs. She wondered how and where he lived. Somewhere on the other side of the city, she knew, and that was all. He never told her about the old scandal and she never could find out more about it. At a certain point in his career Langley had simply shut his mouth and there was no one else who knew more than Harvey Williams.

Horatia gloried in the growing prestige of _The Journal_. Even Harvey bought it now and Maud’s early opposition had changed into a feeling that Horatia with all her eccentricity was bringing distinction upon them. She never said that to Horatia. But she talked of her “intellectual sister” without embarrassment now on the Boulevard.